On April 30, 2026, the DOJ announced the launch of the Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics initiative (FOCUS) to increase coordination between the Department and the growing host of data miners who sift through publicly available government data to identify patterns of alleged fraud. The launch of FOCUS highlights a growing trend in False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement: civilian data miners with access to public data — but no other connection to the alleged defendants — are filing almost as many qui tam complaints as company insiders.
Qui tam filings have risen sharply over the last several years; after filing a then-unprecedented 980 cases in 2024, relators tallied a total of 1,300 qui tam actions in 2025 and have, as of this writing, accounted more than 780 such actions so far for 2026, putting the Department on track for another record-breaking year. Notably, data miners have led almost half (45%) of all qui tam cases since fiscal year 2024. In its description of the FOCUS initiative, the DOJ notes that data miners have been particularly active in bringing cases alleging fraud on pandemic-relief programs. As we have previously discussed, some of these data miners are serial plaintiffs that have found success, whereas others have been defeated by challenges from defendants under the FCA’s public disclosure bar. Recent years have also seen data miners bring cases based on their analysis of a wide range of data sets — from claims data sourced from the Centers...
WASHINGTON (TNND) — The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced criminal charges against 455 people across 45 states accused of participating in health care fraud schemes involving more than $6.5 bi...