Fraud By The Numbers Series
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Why Combatting Healthcare Fraud Is Getting More Important
For fiscal year 2021, $1.2 trillion was allocated to Medicare (which in 2019 covered more than 58 million people). By 2028, Medicare expenditures are projected to reach $1.56 trillion (to cover approximately 75 million people). There are a number of drivers of this growth, but the primary one is the anticipated growth in Medicare enrollment.…
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Highlighting Whistleblowers on Patient Safety Day
Today, we are turning back to healthcare because the World Health Organization has declared September 17th Patient Safety Day. Established in 2019, Patient Safety Day was created to raise awareness of the need to make patient safety a global health priority and to bring stakeholders together in an effort to reduce the incidence and severity…
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How the Government Combats Tax Fraud
Any discussion about fraud on the government would not be complete without a discussion about tax fraud. Tax fraud may involve a failure to pay federal taxes, but it also includes cheating states and localities out of revenue they rely on to operate critical programs. According to the IRS, about $1 trillion in federal taxes…
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How Whistleblowers Can Combat COVID-19 Fraud
Although we are all weary of the widespread disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it continues to affect our daily lives. Unfortunately, the tragic loss of life and economic turmoil caused by the pandemic have been compounded by fraud in COVID-19 relief efforts. When state and local governments began ordering COVID-19 shutdowns starting in March…
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The Success of The SEC Whistleblower Program
Of the major federal whistleblower programs, the SEC Whistleblower Program is the newest, dating back to only 2011. However, in this relatively short period of time, the program has grown quickly. In fact, the number of whistleblower tips has increased year-over-year, including an increase of over 32% in 2020. In addition to garnering an increasing…
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How The SEC Regulates $29 Trillion in Equities
Willie Sutton, a notorious bank robber in the 1930’s was once asked why he robbed banks. His answer, found on the FBI’s Famous Cases page, was: “Because that’s where the money is.” Today’s FBI identifies corporate fraud, including securities fraud, as one of its highest criminal priorities because of the potential for significant losses to…
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Diving Into Defense Fraud
September 11, 2001 ushered in a new era of U.S. defense spending, marked by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the last 20 years, the United States has spent more than $6.4 trillion on those wars. We do not know how much of this enormous sum has been lost to fraud. But as of…
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How 9/11 Recovery Fraud Was Stopped
Twenty years ago, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks devastated the United States, and began one of the largest cleanup and recovery efforts of the modern era. On this anniversary, we are mindful that whenever federal, state, and local governments provide relief money to help victims recover, these efforts are often ripe targets for fraudsters.…
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On National 401(k) Day, Remember the Role of Whistleblowers
Officially, today is National 401(k) day, but for approximately 60 million Americans who have such a plan and are relying on it for retirement, every day is 401(k) day. That’s 60 Million Americans with a reason to check the markets today. The 401(k) has played a big part in creating a generation of Americans who…
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The Billions Lost to Healthcare Fraud
The Government Accountability Office reports that in fiscal year 2019, approximately $46.2 billion in improper payments were made in the Medicare program. And this may even be a conservative estimate! As we will discuss in a future post, other experts have opined that the amount lost to improper payments is two to three times the…