Fraud By The Numbers Series
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The Rise of Data-Driven Relators
The newest breed of whistleblower may never have worked for the company being investigated. Armed with public loan files, billing records, corporate registrations, websites, and increasingly sophisticated analytics, data miners are turning government data into False Claims Act recoveries. The number of filed cases shows how quickly the field is growing. Whistleblowers filed a record 1,297 False Claims…
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Fraud by the Numbers: State False Claims Acts That Take on Tax Fraud
False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement is usually associated with government spending: a contractor overcharges an agency, a grantee misuses government funds, or a company falsely certifies compliance with contract requirements. But in a small number of non-Federal jurisdictions, FCAs can also target the other side of the ledger—money that should have been paid in taxes. Zero versus ten. That…
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Nursing a Grudge: DOJ Cracks Down on Nursing Home Cons
The Department of Justice’s 2025 Report on Combatting Elder Fraud and Abuse revealed the Department initiated 283 enforcement actions involving over 600 defendants charged with stealing or alleged to have stolen over $2 billion from over 1 million victims as well as the government.1 In 2025, the Department brought several enforcement actions against nursing homes and providers that committed fraud, provided medically unnecessary services,…
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Earning the Right to Hear Bad News First
$1 million for a single tip. On January 29, 2026, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the U.S. Postal Service announced the first award under the Antitrust Whistleblower Rewards Program: $1 million to an individual whose information led to a deferred prosecution agreement and $3.28 million criminal fine against EBLOCK Corporation, an online used-vehicle auction…
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Whistleblowers Had a Record Year in 2025
It is time for our yearly review of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) annual False Claims Act (FCA) statistics. In fiscal year 2025,1 DOJ’s FCA statistics broke records in multiple categories. First, DOJ reported an overall total of $6.8 billion recovered through FCA settlements and judgments, of which $5.34 billion was recovered through qui tam actions. As DOJ noted in its press release, that is the highest total…
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The Securities Fraudster’s Shopping List
What happens to investors’ money during a securities fraud? Often, it goes shopping. We reviewed six years of SEC enforcement actions, from January 2020 through December 2025, spanning administrations of both parties. Over that period, the SEC alleged in at least 85 enforcement actions that money taken from investors went to luxury purchases: 37 cases involving luxury…
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Fighting Medicaid Fraud is a Good Investment and Good Policy – The Numbers Show It
Last year’s HHS-OIG report on Medicaid enforcement actions shows that investing in fraud fighting works: the return on investment for every dollar invested in State Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCUs) was a whopping 464%, with recoveries at roughly $2 billion in total. For law enforcement, this is an impressive return on taxpayer money. For healthcare providers, it is a reminder that Medicaid fraud remains a top enforcement priority. And for…
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Welcome to Fraud by the Numbers
Welcome to The Anti-Fraud Coalition’s Sixth Annual Fraud by the Numbers! Each year in September, TAF Coalition uses cold, hard numbers and facts to illustrate how fraud costs the government, taxpayers, and financial market participants – and how impactful whistleblowers can be in stopping that fraud. We will post blogs throughout the month of September demonstrating what the…
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Whistleblowers Can Carry the Torch for Fraud Fighting!
During the past month, Fraud by the Numbers has explored the pervasive nature of fraud on the government and financial markets across sectors, and the efforts to fight that fraud. While the scope of the problem is enormous, recoveries are still small compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars lost to fraud each year. But…
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U.S. Attorneys’ Offices By the Numbers: a Review of July 2024 through July 2025 Settlements
Thus far, 2025 False Claims Act settlement activity is shaping up to be more active than the first three quarters of 2024.* Using publicly available information from press releases, we compiled settlement data to illuminate trends in this space. From January 2025 through July 31, 2025, we saw a total of 171 publicly announced settlements…
