Medicare fraud whistleblowers received some good news this week when Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius published a proposed rule to the Federal Register which would revise Medicare’s Incentive Reward Program provisions dramatically, increasing the maximum reward for whistleblowers from $1,000 to just under $10 million.   Specifically, the proposed rule seeks to reward [...]

The False Claims Act (“FCA”), originally passed in 1863 to incentivize citizens to report dishonest contractors who engaged in fraud against the Union during the Civil War, allows whistleblowers to bring lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. government against companies and individuals who have defrauded the government. Suits under the FCA and similar laws in [...]

A government contractor who was terminated after blowing the whistle on his company, Shaw Environment and Infrastructure Inc. (“Shaw”), for overcharging the government for work at military installations secured a jury verdict of $3.4 million last week.  According to Law360, the whistleblower, Paul Blakeslee, discovered that an employee at Shaw had created a private leasing [...]

A former employee of BAE Systems Information Solutions has sued the company, alleging that he was retaliated against for raising concerns about the company’s fraudulent billing practices.  Cornelius Hosch, an Iraq veteran who was employed by the company as a Region Manager for the Counter-IED Intelligence Analytical Teams (“CIAT”) in the Regional Command East (“RC-E”), [...]

Whistleblowers and whistleblower advocates read an encouraging statistic in article on a recent study by the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.  According to the Wall Street Journal’s article, whistleblowers are playing an increasingly large role in states’ pursuit of cases involving fraud against the government.  In turn, these cases are providing a growing source of [...]

Katz, Marshall & Banks client Michael Lindley, a former Gallup employee who was terminated after he blew the whistle on the company for allegedly fraudulently pursuing government contracts, received some more good news last week.  According to Bloomberg News, Timothy Cannon, the former director of the human capital division of the Federal Emergency Management Agency [...]

Federal contractors received a significant expansion in whistleblower protections under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 (“2013 NDAA”), signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2013.  As we wrote in this blog after the bill passed the Senate, federal contractors are one of the largest sectors of employees in the country, with [...]

Government contract fraud whistleblower Michael Lindley, a Katz, Marshall & Banks client who is currently pursuing a qui tam and retaliation lawsuit against Gallup under the False Claims Act (“FCA”), received encouraging news to start the new year.  On January 2, 2013, the government filed a criminal conflict of interest information against Timothy Cannon, formerly [...]

Pharmaceutical whistleblower Richard Klein reached a $3.9 million settlement with Omeros Corp. last month, bringing an end to his False Claims Act (“FCA”) whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against Seattle-based biopharmaceutical company.  Klein’s lawsuit also alleged that the company had terminated him in retaliation for alerting Omeros’ Audit Committee that the company had falsified timekeeping records on [...]

The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) reported that False Claims Act (“FCA”) whistleblowers provided the DOJ with tips leading to nearly $5 billion in settlements and judgments in fiscal year 2012, marking a new record for a single year.  The previous record was just $3.2 billion.  Since January 2009, the DOJ reported, the agency has [...]