Two men have filed a whistleblower case in what may be one of the largest incidents of Medicare fraud in the country’s history. The plaintiffs are Dr. Alon Vainer, a dialysis clinics medical director, and nurse Daniel Barbir. They contend that their employer, dialysis company DaVita Inc., overbilled Medicaid and…
Ex-Deutsche Bank quantitative risk analyst Dr. Ben-Artzi has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the financial firm. He claims that the bank accurately report its credit derivatives portfolio’s value and that he made his concerns known internally. Ben Artzi is one of three whistleblowers accusing Deutsche Bank of improper reporting to…
During this past fiscal year, the SEC received 3,001 whistleblower tips from tipsters in all 50 states and from 49 nations. Outgoing SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said that the Commission’s whistleblower program has proven valuable in uncovering financial fraud. Earlier this month, the agency issued its “2012 Annual Report on…
Did you know that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s SEC Whistleblower Program also applies to reporting of violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? This means that if you are a whistleblower who reports original information regarding the bribery of a foreign official, you could be entitled to 10-30% of…
According to filings by the US government in federal court in Boston, GlaxoSmithKline has entered a guilty plea to misdemeanor charges that it illegally promoted Wellbutrin and Paxil for uses not that were not FDA-approved, as well as failed to report clinical data about the diabetes drug Avandia. As part…
Stephen Krahlin and Joan Wlochowski, two ex-Merck virologists, have filed a whistleblower complaint against their former employer. They are claiming that Merck committed fraud against the federal government by overstating the effectiveness of its MMR vaccine. As a result, they contend, the government ended up spending hundreds of millions of…
A recently unsealed federal whistleblower lawsuit accuses Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast of turning in over 87,000 reimbursement claims to Medicaid that were either “false, fraudulent, or ineligible.” Abby K. Johnson, the plaintiff, is an ex-director at one of the defendant’s clinics. She says she had “system-wide” access to billing activities…
WellCare Health Plans Inc. has consented to pay $137.5 million to settle four whistleblower lawsuits filed against it over allegations of fraudulent Medicaid and Medicare claims. The health care provider is accused of falsely inflating the amount it claimed to have spent on medical care so it wouldn’t have return…
A $25 million settlement has been reached in the whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former nurse employee against Odyssey HealthCare Inc. Per her Qui Tam complaint, submitted in 2008, between 2006 and 2009 Odyssey enrolled and recertified patients who were non-terminal for hospice care, and billed for services that weren’t…
The US Justice Department says that 636 qui tam complaints were filed for fiscal year 2011, resulting in $2.8B recovered. Of the more than $3B involving the False Claims Act that resulted in settlements and judgments from fraud cases, $2.4 billion was related to fraud committed against a number of…