Fraud By The Numbers Series
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The Middle District of Florida Court Finds the Qui Tam Provision of the False Claims Act Unconstitutional because a Relator is an “Officer” of the United States
Despite all previous Circuit Courts holding that the FCA is constitutional under Article II, the court held that an FCA relator is an officer of the United States must be appointed and dismissed the case. On September 30, 2024, the Middle District of Florida granted the defendants’ Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings in United…
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More Resources Are Needed in the Fight on Fraud
Over the last month, Fraud by the Numbers has emphasized the vast problem of fraud on the government and our financial markets – fraud that is not just taking money out of your pockets, but is causing harm to patients, members of our military, and the stability of our financial systems and future – and contrasted it…
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An Ounce of Prevention is Worth Billions for a Cure
Were you stuck in an airport this summer when flights around the world were grounded by a security update by Crowdstrike that took out computers at airports, hospitals and financial institutions? Preliminary damage estimates from that incident are already more than $5.4 billion. Or maybe you were impacted by the Change Healthcare hack that impacted…
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Which U.S. Attorneys’ Offices Brought in the Highest Recoveries in the Past Five Years?
That’s the question we wanted to answer, by reviewing settlements and judgments in False Claims Act cases by each U.S. Attorney’s office. The last time Fraud by the Numbers reported on the U.S. Attorney’s offices, we looked at the full history back to the institution of the modern version of the Act amended in 1986.…
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DOJ’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative: A Milestone in Cybersecurity Enforcement
DOJ’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative: A Milestone in Cybersecurity Enforcement In October 2021, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) launched its Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative, a pioneering effort to use the False Claims Act to prosecute (1) government vendors that knowingly provide the government deficient cybersecurity products and services, and (2) government contractors that knowingly misrepresent their cybersecurity…
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The Government Spends Much Less on Fraud Cases than Big Companies Spend Defending Them
As we have previously discussed on Fraud by the Numbers, the government has a limited number of lawyers working on False Claims Act (FCA) cases. For each FCA case that is filed, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) assigns an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the federal district court in which…
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Pill Talk: Negotiating, Lobbying, and Inflating Drug Prices
The government spends a lot of money on Medicare and Medicaid. And the numbers are only getting larger. By 2030, it is projected that Medicaid spending will exceed $700 billion. A massive portion of this spending goes towards prescription drugs. How did we get here, and is it possible to reduce the government spending? Pharmacy…
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CFTC Whistleblowers: An Underfunded Program For an Underfunded Agency
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is fifty years old this year. Its whistleblower awards program is fourteen years old. But this long-established agency and its whistleblower program remain perennially underfunded. The CFTC’s jurisdiction is broad and expanding with the advent of cryptocurrencies. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, including futures contracts, options, and swaps,…
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Based on Past, DOJ’s New Whistleblower Program Could Yield Big Recoveries for Taxpayers
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently unveiled a new whistleblower program, the Criminal Division Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program, on August 1, 2024. This new program enables eligible whistleblowers who report information about corporate and financial misconduct potentially to receive an award from the resulting forfeiture. The new program is designed to fill gaps that…
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Troublesome Trends in Crypto Crime
Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, cryptocurrency has surged in popularity, generating immense wealth for some individuals and immense financial losses for others. Though its resounding volatility has caused some traders and investors to reap significant gains, it has likewise caused immense losses, significantly so from the 2022 crypto crash. Volatility is not the…
