Massive State
Pension Frauds Ahead?
Massive FCA
cases dealing
with billions of
dollars stolen
from state
pension funds
may lie
ahead. Federal
prosecutors have
already
collected over
$1.6 billion in
FCA settlements
from Bank of
America,
Citigroup,
Deutsche Bank
and Flagstar,
based on the
defrauding of
federal home
insurance
programs.
Billions more
may yet be
collected by state
pension funds
ripped
off when they
invested in
mortgage-backed
securities sold by
companies who
knew the
ratings were
rotten. Notes
Eric Havian
of
Phillips & Cohen,
"If issuers knew
the ratings were
false and they
sold securities
to state pension
funds, they
would absolutely
be liable. That's an
easy FCA case." Other
potential state pension fraud
cases cover
foreign-exchange
and
Libor
fraud.
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False Claims Act Update & Alert |
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Taxpayers
Against Fraud Education Fund | Washington, D.C. |
WWW.TAF.ORG
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n TAF Home Page n Previous Newsletters n Email editor
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 JPMorgan
Chase Pays $296 Million The SEC says at least one whistleblower is responsible for all or part of an SEC case filed against JPMorgan Chase which has resulted in $296 million in fines collected. Whistleblowers have until May 9th to apply to collect anywhere from 10% to 30% of penalties collected. |
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 How Do You Count
Success?The 2012 Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control report is out, and in that report, HHS and DoJ note that “for every dollar spent on health care-related fraud and abuse investigations in the last three years, the government recovered $7.90.” Not said: almost all the money coming in is due to whistleblower-initiated False Claims Act cases, with other expensive fraud fighting efforts producing comparatively little revenue. The HCFAC report notes that “government’s health care fraud prevention and enforcement efforts recovered a record $4.2 billion in taxpayer dollars in Fiscal Year (FY) 2012,” but fails to even mention a $1.5 billion settlement with Abbott or the nearly 200 million dollars returned to the federal government from state-initiated FCA cases (SCAN in California, and Janssen and Actavis in Texas). |
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 Did
DaVita
Shoot Itself in the Foot?Dialysis company DaVita is trying to sue a whistleblower for breach of contract for not internally reporting first, but that legal gambit might have backfired. As District Court Judge Charles Pannell notes: "In order to prove that Alon Vainer breached the contract by not informing the defendants about violations of applicable law, the defendants would have to first prove that such violations actually occurred. If these violations occurred, then the defendants would be liable for them." Oops! |
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 Doctor to Pay $26 Million in FCA
CaseVenice, Florida dermatologist Steven J. Wasserman did thousands of unnecessary surgeries on patients in order to increase billing to Medicare and Medicaid and now, after a whistleblower-initiated lawsuit was filed, he will have to pay $26.1 million to settle an FCA case charging him with accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks as well. |
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 Other
Stories:4Cornell Law School Course on the FCA 4St. Luke’s-Roosevelt to Pay $2.3 Million 4Catholic Health to Pay $4.9 Million 4Sen. Grassley Will Have Questions for the IRS 4Get Rid of the Term "White Collar Crime"? 4Gallup Fraud on NPR 4The Rise of SEC Whistleblower Cases |
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Well Fargo
Fails to Avoid More Liability