ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER False Claims Lawsuit Spotlights Medicare/Medi-Cal Overbilling False Claims A false claims lawsuit against a nursing home alleging overbilling of Medicare and Medi-Cal recently settled for $54 million. The large false claims case was a whistleblower suit, also known as a qui tam. According to reports of the settlement, […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER $13.45 Million Settlement in False Claims Case The Recent Case Recently, three cardiac monitoring device providers agreed to settle a whistleblower case (also known as a “qui tam”) against them for alleged false claims to the government for reimbursement under Medicare. The whistleblower was a former sales manager […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Department of Justice Watching Medicare Advantage Program How Whistleblowers Help The Department of Justice (DOJ) is taking a close look at government reimbursement of private insurers under Medicare’s Medicare Advantage Program. Medicare Advantage is a private insurer alternative to Parts A and B of the Medicare program for […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Prosecuting Healthcare Fraud Under the False Claims Act Healthcare Fraud and Whistleblowing Healthcare fraud costs the United States billions of dollars per year. The fraud is perpetrated in myriad ways against a variety of victims but by far the nation’s largest healthcare fraud are false claims against the […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER The IRS Whistleblower Reward Increased in Fiscal 2016 The IRS announced that rewards paid to whistleblowers from October 1st, 2015 to September 30, 2016 will have a 6.8 percent deduction. There is a similar deduction from the award every year, typically taken to pay outstanding government debts, and […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance this week regarding their whistleblower protections. This reinforced their stance that whistleblowers are protected against retaliation even if they report internally within their company, rather than to the agency, first. The Dodd-Frank Act, which created the SEC whistleblower program, had whistleblower […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Thanks to whistleblower George Karadsheh, a doctor who was improperly giving patients chemotherapy was stopped. Dr. Farid Fata, a Michigan doctor, was recently sentenced to 45 years in jail. According to prosecutors, Fata mistreated over 500 patients. In some cases, he was administering chemotherapy to people who did […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Two pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca and Teva Pharmaceutical’s Cephalon unit, have settled with the government after facing claims about rebates underpayment to Medicaid programs. The two companies have agreed to pay over 50 million dollars as a result of the Medicaid fraud allegations. This is one of the latest […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER The Department of Justice announced that a Medicare fraud case against AseraCare hospice facilities will start August 3, after a half-dozen employees filed whistleblower cases under the False Claims Act. The company could owe up to $202 million. The whistleblowers, and the Department of Justice, which elected to […]

ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER Since the inception of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s whistleblower program when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law in 2010, the SEC has done what it takes to make the program successful. In addition to awarding payments of over $50 million […]