False Claims Act Update & Alert |
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Taxpayers
Against Fraud Education Fund | Washington, D.C. |
WWW.TAF.ORG |
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 Rolling
Bombs on the Road?
The
Department of Defense,
NASA, and Department of Energy operate
hundreds of tanker trucks that transport
gases such as hydrogen, oxygen, helium, methane,
hydrogen chloride, and nitrogen. Unbelievably, one of the companies
that was paid to pressure test these tanker trucks to make
sure they were safe did not even have the equipment to do
the job. Nonetheless, the company billed the
Government scores of millions of dollars a year for testing, and was found out
only because a whistleblower came forward with insider
information. >>
To read
more
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 Gambro
Whistleblower PraisedU.S. Attorney Jim Martin has nothing but praise for Dr. Steven Bander, who blew the whistle on Medicare fraud perpetrated by Gambro Healthcare. "Without the information he gave use, we would not have knows about this case. We collected $350 million from Gambro Healthcare specifically because this man initiated the whistleblower lawsuit that he did." Bander, a St. Louis kidney specialist, was Gambro's chief medical officer from 1995 to 2000, and will receive $56 million for his assistance to the U.S. Government. A significant portion of this amount will be paid to his attorneys and to the Federal Government (in the form of taxes). >> To read more |
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 NY,
FL, CA Fraud HuntersMedicare currently reviews less than 5% of claims, but an experimental program in New York, California and Florida will soon have audit contractors looking at a larger number of submissions. Auditing firms will be paid based on how much they recoup in overpayments, but overbilling for "Evaluation and Management" is exempt from such oversight despite the fact that CMS found $20 in overbilling for every $1 in underbilling in this arena. >> To read more |
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 Bloomberg
Veto Unlikely to StandNew York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has vetoed a City Council-passed version of the False Claims Act, but City Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn) says the Council is sure to override the Mayor's veto. The City Council has overridden 27 of the Mayor's 29 previous vetoes. >>To read more |
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 $6.5 Million
for Overhead PaddingArthur D. Little Inc. has agreed to pay $6.5 million to resolve civil claims related to overbilling the federal government through the use of inflating indirect costs and overhead charges on government contracts. |
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 A War on Fraud?4The Office of the Inspector General of HHS dedicates less than $10 million a year to supporting DoJ litigation against Medicare and Medicaid frauds, but collects more than $160 million a year from the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control program (HCFAC). 4Less that 100 False Claims Act cases of any kind are settled every year. 4There are 95 U.S. Attorneys, but most do not file even a single FCA Act case a year. 4Most large False Claims Act settlements come out of only two U.S. Attorney offices -- Philadelphia and Boston. 4Though FCA investigations and prosecutions bring in $13 for every $1 invested, the DoJ has imposed a hiring freeze and is not adding lawyers. |
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