The Justice Department is more aggressively targeting companies that have fraudulently billed government agencies, expanding the volume and complexity of investigations that could be years away from producing results.
Big Law attorneys defending cases under the Civil War-era False Claims Act say enforcers are less sympathetic to pandemic-era concerns that penalties could drive health-care providers and other employers out of business. Justice Department attorneys, in collaboration with private whistleblowers who file most false claims litigation, are also pursuing sophisticated FCA cases that rely on advanced data analysis and novel legal theories while gaining leverage with the threat of parallel criminal probes.
“If you want to know what keeps corporate compliance officers and general counsel up at night, particularly in companies that do business with government programs, it is less traditional white-collar criminal enforcement and more FCA civil cases,” said Eric Sitarchuk, a partner at Morgan Lewis in Philadelphia.
Sitarchuk, who represents businesses nationwide, said he’s noticed a “significant uptick in the number of active FCA investigations, the level of resources the government is putting into them, the number of agents that are working them, and the level of teamwork and coordination between US attorneys and Main Justice.” That’s on...
The prosecution said the videos, published on Instagram, contained unsubstantiated allegations against a faculty member at the law school of an unnamed private university and were considered capab...