The Wall Street Journal reports today that Justice Department officials have recommended joining a federal whistleblower lawsuit filed by former teammate Floyd Landis that alleges that Lance Armstrong and team managers defrauded the U.S. government when they accepted money from the U.S. Postal Service and then violated their contract by using performance-enhancing drugs...
On January 1, 2013, the amendments to the California False Claims Act, signed into law last year by Governor Jerry Brown, took effect. The amendments, among other things, expand the definition of a claim under the state False Claims Act, increase the civil penalties for each violation of the law, and provide qui tam plaintiffs with up to 33% of the proceeds of the action or...
The Journal of Accountancy reports that the Internal Revenue Service has proposed regulations for whistleblower awards in violation of tax law cases and for the disclosure of tax return information. The proposed regulations are intended to provide general rules for submitting claims to the IRS, rules for proceedings, and factors to evaluate the size of an award. Read the...
Healthpoint Ltd. and DFB Pharmaceuticals have agreed to pay up to $48 million to resolve allegations that Healthpoint caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare and Medicaid programs for a non-FDA approved skin ointment, Xenaderm. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that Healthpoint misrepresented Xenaderm’s regulatory status in its government reports and...
The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that it has secured $4.9 billion in settlements and judgments in civil cases involving fraud against the government in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012. This figure tops the Justice Department's 2011 recoveries by $1.7 billion. Of the $4.9 billion in fiscal year 2012 recoveries, a record $3.3 billion was recovered in...
President Obama today signed the Whistleblower Protection Enahncement Act into law. The law, which was passed by both houses of Congress by unanimous consent, expands the protections for federal workers to report misconduct, fraud and illegality, expands the penalties imposed for violating whistleblower protections, and establishes a Whistleblower Protection Ombudsmen in...
New York-based Park Avenue Medical Associates, P.C., Park Avenue Health Care Management LLC, and Park Avenue Health Care Management, Inc. (collectively “PAMA”) have agreed to pay $1 million to resolve allegations that the companies knowingly submitted or caused the submission of false claims to Medicare, the U.S. Department of Justice announced last month.
Medicare...
The government will intervene in a whistleblower lawsuit against Florida-based A Plus Home Health Care, Inc. and its owner, Tracy Nemerofsky, the U.S. Department of Justice announced last month. A Plus allegedly offered referring physicians’ spouses sham marketing positions with the company to induce the physicians to refer Medicare patients for its home health...
According to the Corporate Crime Reporter, federal and state whistleblower claims under the False Claims Act resulted in more than $9 billion in recoveries in 2012, more than double the amount in 2011. A single Medicaid HMO case in California was responsible for $300 million of that, according to the article, and of the 30 largest settlements, 28 were whistleblower-...
A CVS subsidiary, RxAmerica, has agreed to a $5 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice based on allegations that they defrauded the Medicare prescription drug plan. RxAmerica allegedly received Medicare Part D payments for covered generic prescription medication at prices that were sometimes significantly higher than pricing data the company submitted to...
