The Department of Justice has recently announced its year end statistics for False Claims Act cases and the results are exciting!
Highlights include:
-Nearly three billion dollars recovered (more than $2.8 billion) in settlements and judgments. And this does not consider additional money returned to state Medicaid programs. Of the $2.8 billion, $2.1 billion was attributable to qui tam cases. (The Government can bring a False Claims Act case without having a relator.)
-About $2.5 billion of that money – about 53% – came from healthcare-related matters, i.e., fraud on the Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and other government-funded healthcare programs. This includes the $84.5 million settlement that our firm had with a Detroit-based hospital. Pretty exciting to think that one of our cases was responsible for about 4% of all qui tam recoveries!
-Whistleblowers filed 645 qui tam suits in fiscal year 2018.
-Relators’ shares awarded during the fiscal year totaled $301.7 million, with $32.6 million in shares paid in declined cases.
-The number of lawsuits filed under the qui tam provisions of the Act has grown significantly since 1986, with 645 qui tam suits filed this past year – an average of more than 12 new cases every week.
“Whistleblowers have played a vital role in unmasking fraudulent schemes that might otherwise evade detection,” said Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt. “The taxpayers owe a debt of gratitude to those who often put much on the line to expose such schemes.”
You can find the full statistics here.