Fraud By The Numbers Series

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Introduction

    Welcome to The Anti-Fraud Coalition’s Third Annual Fraud by the Numbers! This annual effort started as a COVID-era project to illustrate with real data how fraud impacts all of us. While a trillion dollars would have been an unfathomably large number a generation ago, we now routinely talk about annual government budgets approaching ten trillion dollars,…

  • RELEASE: Dept. of Justice Stats Spotlight the Importance of Declined False Claims Act Whistleblower Cases

    Over Half of the FY2022 Dollars Recovered Under the False Claims Act Were in Declined Qui Tam Actions Washington, DC — On February 7, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported its False Claims Act (FCA) statistics for fiscal year (FY) 2022. DOJ reported more than $2.2 billion was recovered from both settlements and…

  • RELEASE: Fraud By The Numbers in 2022

    Washington, DC — Fraud continues to have a massive impact on our economy, health care systems, and way of life. When corporate fraud drains billions of dollars from the financial markets, it steals more than dollars — it steals years of life from its victims. To the mastermind, the ill-gotten gains are a windfall; but…

  • Fraud By The Numbers Sept. 30

    For the last 30 days, we have explored the fraud schemes that siphon government dollars and undermine our financial markets. We have documented how incentivized whistleblower programs unmask the perpetrators of these frauds and recover billions of stolen dollars for the U.S. Treasury and the American people. We have discussed how whistleblowers effectively safeguard our prescription…

  • Fraud By The Numbers Sept. 29

    In October 1970, Lynn Anderson sang her way into country music stardom crooning, “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.” Anderson’s cover shot to number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 by February 1971 and earned Anderson the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for 1970.  For whistleblowers, there…

  • Fraud By The Numbers Sept. 28

    We talk a lot about False Claims Act recoveries for the United States as a whole.  But we rarely look at where exactly the cases that lead to those recoveries are filed, and which U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in those districts are working with relators most frequently to deliver those results. To help answer those questions,…

  • Fraud By The Numbers Sept. 27

    Are you considering becoming a whistleblower? If so, you are one of the few and the brave.  It may seem like whistleblowers are very common. After all, they are heroes of popular films such as The Insider, Erin Brockevich, The Informant, The Pelican Brief, and many others. But as popular as whistleblowers are in Hollywood, their actual…

  • Fraud By The Numbers Sept. 26

    Corporate defense counsel and their allies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have unfairly maligned whistleblowers as “living the dream” and receiving a “windfall” from their awards. This characterization could not be further from the truth. Not only do whistleblowers face enormous risk–often for relatively little reward–but the tax code benefits fraudsters over whistleblowers…

  • Fraud By The Numbers Sept. 25

    According to the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) recently released “Snapshot of Government Spending,” the federal government spent about $637 billion on contracts for Fiscal Year 2021. Roughly 7.6% of all government contracting went to the purchases of drugs and biologics.1 Civilian agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services bought $13 Billion, and defense related…

  • Fraud By The Numbers Sept. 24

    Medical devices can be big or small, ordinary or incredible. They include such disparate items as surgical face masks and cardiac defibrillators. In fiscal year 2020, Medicare paid $11.2 billion for durable (multiple use) medical equipment and $2.3 billion for non-durable (single use) medical equipment, a total of $13.5 billion for the two categories that…