False Claims Act Update & Alert
	Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund | Washington, D.C. | WWW.TAF.ORG           June 2, 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!	Abbott's in Talks Over Depakote Abbott Laboratories and the U.S. Department of Justice are in active settlement discussions over a False Claims Act lawsuit charging the company with illegal off-label marketing of the epilepsy drug Depakote. DoJ has asked for a delay in filing an amended complaint until July 8. Depakote sales are about $1.5 billion a year. Other epilepsy drugs that have been off-label marketed include Neurontin, Trileptal, and Zonegran. >> To read more
			A Potentially Explosive Case U.S. District Judge Steve Merryday has greenlighted a False Claims Act case against DSE Inc. and its subcontractors, Kaman Precision Products, GTI Systems and JKS Industries. The charge:  the companies, which make different parts of military grenades, ignored quality control problems which caused the grenades to detonate prematurely or not at all. >> To read more
			Bring Heat and They May See Light What do we do with a really big fraudster deemed to be "too big to fail" whose top executives seem to be "too privileged to jail"? Answer: exclude top managers and executives who wink at fraud or ignore it. As Lew Morris, General Counsel for the inspector general of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services puts it: “To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren’t getting it. If writing a check for $200 million isn’t enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top.”  >> To read more
			Massachusetts Looks at Forex Fraud Massachusetts has hired a consultant to look into foreign exchange trading involving its public pension fund portfolio. The concern is that while the state parked billions of dollars with banks that had a fiduciary responsibility to work in the best interests of their clients, these same banks were also “principals’’ in the trades and made money at the expense of the state. California, Virginia and Florida have already joined False Claims Act cases, and dozens of other states may soon follow suit. >> To read more
			Fresenius Faces Treble Damages Last year Fresenius Medical Care got nailed for overbilling Medicare. Now U.S. District Judge William J. Haynes has ordered the company to pay treble damages of $38.9 million under the False Claims Act, plus statutory penalties of $43.7 million, for a total of $82.6 million.  Fresenius is the world’s biggest provider of kidney dialysis, and a repeat offender under the False Claims Act. >> To read more
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