In December, 2015, the United States Department of Justice reported that it obtained over $3,500,000,000.00 in judgments and settlements from civil cases of fraud and false claims against the federal government by contractors under the False Claims Act (“FCA”). Once again, health care fraud by hospitals, doctors and other practitioners was at the forefront: per its Office of Public Affairs press release (available online) a whopping $1,900,000,000.00 – more than 50% of the total federal recovery – “came from companies and individuals in the health care industry for allegedly providing unnecessary or inadequate care, paying kickbacks to health care providers to induce the use of certain goods and services, or overcharging for goods and services paid by Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs”.
The Department of Justice emphasized that private citizen “whistleblowers” were the source of $2,800,000,000.00 (about 80%) of its 2015 federal fraud recoveries – and personally were awarded almost $600,000,000.00 exposing such fraud:
Most false claims actions are filed under the Act’s whistleblower, or qui tam, provisions that allow individuals to file lawsuits alleging false claims on behalf of the government. If the government prevails in the action, the whistleblower, also known as the relator, receives up to 30 percent of the recovery. Whistleblowers filed 638 qui tam suits in fiscal year 2015 and the department recovered $2.8 billion in these and earlier filed suits this past year. Whistleblower awards during the same period totaled $597 million.
(underlining added). Mr. Waterman’s law firm handles FCA cases for “whistleblowers,” so please come forward in 2016 with suspected health care and/or other governmental fraud.
THE VIRGINIA STATE BAR REQUIRES ALL LAWYERS TO POST THE FOLLOWING DISCLAIMERS ON ALL CASE-RELATED POSTS. MR. WATERMAN’S CASE RESULTS AND CLIENT TESTIMONIALS DEPEND UPON A VARIETY OF FACTORS UNIQUE TO EACH CASE. THEY DO NOT GUARANTEE OR PREDICT A SIMILAR RESULT IN ANY FUTURE CASE BY HIM.
