Category: News

It turns out that one of the top ranked websites for statistics concerning whistleblowers is a random business site pushing marketing services. It mentions the False Claims Act twice and doesn’t even mention the Internal Revenue Service or Securities and Exchange Commission. Published in 2015, it’s obvious that someone just went out there to research...

President Obama announced the nomination of D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court at a press conference at 11 AM today. The pick will now be sent to the Senate, which the U.S. Constitution provides with the power to provide advice and consent to the President on the appointment....

Employees continued to report misconduct internally at higher levels and those reports were confirmed at an all-time high in 2015, according to the Navex Global annual Ethics and Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report released yesterday. Navex analyzes data from 860,000 reports across 2,300 organizations globally, including information from compliance hotlines, and compiles the information into its...

Multiple whistleblowers appear the norm these days in securities lawsuits, if the two most recent award determinations are any indication of the success of the Dodd-Frank whistleblower program. Yesterday, the Securities & Exchange Commission released a reward determination authorizing payment of $1.8 million to one individual and $130,000 to be split between two other whistleblowers....

The global problem of bribery isn’t going away anytime soon. Forty percent of all compliance officers reported the risk of bribery and corruption at their company will increase this year, according to the Kroll and Ethisphere Institute report released this morning: The 2016 Anti-Bribery and Corruption Report. Just 8 percent believed that their corruption risks...

A 2005 GAO report concerning problems in the Raytheon contract to develop an environmental satellite system did not bar a later False Claims Act lawsuit filed by a whistleblower under the public disclosure provision, according to the Ninth Circuit. Reuters put the value of the potential lawsuit at $1 billion in a recent headline about...

One area of health care where there have been a handful of whistleblowers recently is hospice fraud. Hospice spending has exploded from nearly $3 billion in 2000 to over $15 billion in 2012, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article on hospice fraud published yesterday. If fraud prosecutions are any measure, there has been a fair...

Earlier this week, medical device manufacturer Olympus agreed to pay the largest ever civil False Claims Act settlement by a medical device manufacturer to resolve a lawsuit over violations of the federal anti-kickback statute. In addition to the record $310.8 million, they also agreed to pay $312.4 million in criminal penalties. A reward of around...