DOJ FCA Qui Tam
On April 30, the Justice Department’s Civil Division announced the launch of its Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics (FOCUS) initiative. The premise behind the initiative is to prioritize the increasing number of “data miners,” those individuals or companies that analyze and file qui tams. The miners are not the traditional company insiders who have served as relators under the federal False Claims Act (FCA).
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brenna E. Jenny of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said in the press release, “We are interested in hearing from data miners who believe they have developed particularly effective tools for detecting fraud against the government.” Jenny recently spoke on this topic at the Pharmaceutical Compliance Congress.
Through the FOCUS initiative, data miners will have an opportunity to meet with the Civil Fraud Section to discuss their capabilities and outline why and how their data signals reliably correlate to fraud. Such meetings are not a pre-filing requirement, but the Department will prioritize working with data miners that have demonstrated an investment in pre-filing diligence and commitment to analytical rigor, familiarity with program rules, and legally sufficient allegations.
For more analysis on what manufacturers could consider, look to WilmerHale’s client alert.
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