False Claims Act Update & Alert
	Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund | Washington, D.C. | WWW.TAF.ORG           January 20, 2011
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		Subscribe to this FREE Newsletter Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz n TAF Home Page n Previous Newsletters n Email editor   Please take a moment to forward this FREE electronic newsletter to others that might be interested!	New York to Get Serious on Tax Cheats Last summer, New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman (now state Attorney General) won unanimous support for strengthening and expanding the state’s whistleblower law to include tax fraud.  Why the unanimous support for this law in a legislature famous for its divisions? TAF Chairman Neil Getnick says it's simple political economics: “This has a lot to do with the fact that the state finds itself in the midst of a financial crisis and everyone understands, on both sides of the aisle, that there is no room for fraud.” >> To read more
			Hacking at the Pharma Backlog Are more pharmaceutical fraud cases being settled than filed? Nope. Not yet. On page 19 of the most recent Virginia Medicaid Fraud Control Unit report, we find 122 civil pharmaceutical fraud cases carried over from the previous year, 60 new ones opened, 26 settled, and 156 cases pending. Bottom line: the case load grew by 34 in a single year.  An informal review of state MFCU reports suggests almost all of the major financial recoveries now coming in are a result of federal False Claims Act cases.
			A Growth in Insanity or Just Payola? From 1995 to 2000, approximately 6 million doctor's office visits a year ended with a prescription for anti-psychotic drugs. After 2000, however, visits related to psychotic drugs skyrocketed to 14.3 million. A new report notes that 9 million of those prescriptions (almost all of the growth) were for purposes not approved by the FDA, such as treating depression, aggression, or post-traumatic stress. Not coincidentally, the makers of three of the most commonly prescribed atypical anti-psychotic drugs are now under investigation for bribing doctors in order to write more prescriptions.
			The SEC Intends to Reward Integrity The Securities and Exchange Commission has set aside more than $450 million to pay whistleblowers that come forward under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act enacted in July of 2010. Under the Act, if a whistleblower's information leads to sanctions totaling more than $1 million, the tipster may receive an award of between 10 and 30 percent of the total amount recovered.
			SEC Whistleblower Program Rules Following passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC promulgated 181-pages of proposed rules and asked the public for their comments on those rules. Taxpayers Against Fraud's comments can be read here.
			SEC Whistleblower Office Seeks Budget The SEC says it needs budget authority from Congress to fund the whistleblower office created by the Dodd-Frank Act. While Dodd-Frank mandated the creation of a whistleblower office, it did not give the SEC budget authority -- an oversight that will have to be corrected before moving forward. >> To read more
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