The Justice Department recently reported obtaining more than $5.6 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving fraud and false claims against the government in fiscal year 2021. Justice Department’s False Claims Act Settlements and Judgments Exceed $5.6 Billion in Fiscal Year 2021 (Feb. 1, 2022). This is the largest annual total in False Claims Act (FCA) history since 2014, no doubt spurred in part by fraud related to COVID-19. This growing wave of fraud has not only caught the attention of federal authorities, but also private parties who are bringing more and more lawsuits in New York federal courts and in federal courts across the country under the FCA alleging fraud against the government, including fraud against federal health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
In general terms, the FCA imposes liability on persons who knowingly submit false claims to defraud federal government programs. In addition to allowing the United States to pursue perpetrators of fraud on its own, the FCA allows private citizens to file suits on behalf of the government (called “qui tam” suits) against those who have defrauded the government. Because these are fraud claims, they are subject to the heightened pleading requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b), which states that, “[i]n alleging fraud …, a party must state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud.”
A popular social media conspiracy theory about a recent cluster of hantavirus cases claims that the word “hanta” means “scam,” “fraud,” or “nonsense” in “Hebrew slang.” That’s more or less where t...