The Department of Justice has announced that during FY 2021, it obtained more than $5.6 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving fraud and false claims against the government. Of the $5.6 billion in settlements and judgments, over $1.6 billion arose from lawsuits filed under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act. And during FY 2021, the federal government paid $237 million to whistleblowers (also known as qui tam relators) who exposed fraud and false claims by filing these actions.
Although the FY 2021 recoveries are signficiant, they are arguably a drop in the bucket in terms of recovering losses to taxpayers. Medicare loses approximately $60 billion annually due to fraud. CMS estimates that Medicare Advantage plans overbill the government approximately $10 billion annually by exaggerating the severity of patients’ medical conditions or by charging Medicare for treating serious medical conditions they cannot prove their patients have. If the government could intervene in more False Claims Act whistleblower qui tam actions and lend more support to non-intervened qui tam actions, the annual recoveries for taxpayers would be much higher.
The DOJ also reported that 598 qui tam suits were filed during FY 2021 – an average of over 11 new cases every week. Acting Assistant Attorney General Boynton acknowledged the critical role that whistleblowers play in DOJ’s enforcement of the False Claims Act: “Industry insiders are uniquely positioned to...
Melania Trump on Thursday (April 9) issued an unexpected public statement denying any connection to Jeffrey Epstein, pushing back against what she described as long-running false claims circulatin...