This virtual conference is available to all members of the Federal Bar Association
Panel Details
Date & Time: Friday, February 25, 2022 at 1:10 PM ET
Title: The Modern Relator
Description
This panel of experienced qui tam plaintiff lawyers will provide an in-depth discussion on the evolution of qui tam cases, from the traditional individual whistleblower to the corporate relator.
Join this impressive panel of lawyers in their discussion about the various forms of relators, including corporations and professional data miners, and the motivation behind these relator types. The panel will share their experiences with true corporate relators versus corporate fiction and provide useful insight as to how courts have been perceiving these various relator forms.
The panel will also discuss modern alternatives to the traditional relator, such as relator coalitions, and the driving factors behind creating such arrangements. The panelists will also provide an overview of some of their more notable cases and what they learned from representing the “modern relator.”
Confirmed Speakers
- Alison Hawthorne, Principal, Beasley Allen (moderator)
- Jason Marcus, Principal, Bracker & Marcus LLC
- James Barger, Jr., Principal, Frohsin Barger & Walthall LLC
- Robert “Bob” Thomas, Jr., Managing Member, Whistleblower Law Collaborative LLC
Marcus To Speak on Data Miners as Relators
This three-day event sponsored by the Federal Bar Association—dubbed “the Oscars for False Claims Act nerds” by a prior panelist—is one of the premier conferences in the world of qui tam and False Claims Act litigation.
Attendees include relator’s counsel, defense counsel, whistleblowers, and government attorneys, providing a balanced perspective on most of the topics discussed.
In his panel, Jason will be focusing on data miners as relators. Data miners are outsiders who use programs and algorithms to find outliers in publicly available billing data. If the outlier status is sufficient to show fraud, the data miner may then bring a False Claims Act lawsuit against the individuals or companies.
For example, if the data shows that a healthcare provider billed Medicare so much that he would have had to spend 10 hours per day, 7 days per week, without taking any breaks or seeing any non-Medicare patients, then in all likelihood there is some funny business going on.
On a more sophisticated level, one recent data mining case involved a doctor who billed a high volume of claims for a certain procedure, but a very low number of claims for a different procedure that is supposed to be done first. This indicated to the data miner—who was himself a doctor with experience in this area—that the billed procedures had to have been false.
Other speakers will discuss corporations as whistleblowers, including both competitors ratting out their rivals (like overpricing EpiPens) or whistleblowers forming corporations for the purpose of being the named whistleblower in litigation. Jason will also discuss how the latter has led to some fairly disastrous results for certain potential whistleblowers, including the government dismissing their case.
Reserve Your Spot Today
Registration for the event includes more than just Jason’s panel, of course. Other topics include a discussion about the year in review; use of the False Claims Act as a weapon against cyber fraud; prosecuting telehealth fraud; the use of data analytics in False Claims Act cases; statistical sampling; pandemic-related fraud; and a panel of veteran judges discussing their experiences with the False Claims Act, including the Honorable Judge Amy Totenberg, Senior District Court Judge for the Northern District of Georgia.
Watch Jason and other experts on the False Claims Act speak from the comfort of your office, living room, or bed, if you are feeling particularly lazy.
Choose Atlanta Whistleblower Attorneys with Experience & Authority
Julie and Jason have been representing relators in whistleblower cases for nearly two decades, and so they are frequently recruited to speak to other attorneys on topics such as these. Bracker & Marcus LLC is one of the most prolific plaintiff’s law firms in the False Claims Act arena, so they have seen just about all there is to see when it comes to False Claims Act cases.
Experience in nuanced areas such as corporate and outsider relators can be the difference between a successful resolution and a declined or dismissed lawsuit. If you are interested in filing a False Claims Act lawsuit, give our False Claims Act attorneys a call for a free evaluation.