Fraud Enforcement Matters.
The past year saw the Department of Justice recover over $2 billion in cases under the False Claims Act. Those cases included settlements in cases brought against pharmaceutical companies for paying kickbacks to influence the use of their products and that undermined the integrity of federal health care programs, as well as cases against health care providers charging the government for medically unnecessary services that also risked patient safety. The roster of settlements also included settlements in cases involving covid relief fraud, failure to comply with cybersecurity requirements, and providing the military with defective equipment.
As President Biden stated in his State of the Union Speech, “the data shows that for every dollar we put into fighting fraud, the taxpayers get back at least 10 times as much. It matters. It matters.” The recovery of taxpayer dollars taken through fraudulent schemes that undermine government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, that risk the safety of military personnel, or that knowingly overcharge for goods and services, means much-needed funds are available to implement the government programs Americans rely upon.
The Government has recovered over $72 billion in cases brought under the False Claims Act since Congress amended the Act in 1986, increasing the incentives and protections for private individuals with information about fraud against the Government to bring that information to the Government’s attention. It matters.
About the author
Ned Arens, a partner at Phillips & Cohen, focuses on “qui tam” whistleblower cases as well as whistleblower claims filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.
He has represented whistleblowers in a number of cases, including: A whistleblower case against Office Depot that the company paid $68.5 million to settle and a qui tam lawsuit against Alliant Techsystems (ATK), which settled for $37 million. The lawsuit alleged the company sold the US Air Force defective flares that were used to provide illumination for military operations.
Mr. Arens graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he was a senior production editor of the Hastings Law Journal. While in law school, he was a legal intern with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the General Counsel, and with the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division. Mr. Arens is admitted to the bar in California.