Federal False Claims Act cases are tough on defendants and their lawyers. The stakes are always high with the risk of treble damages, significant penalties per claim and the imposition of relator attorney fees. And the government and the whistleblowers are just getting warmed up, particularly in health care fraud FCA cases.
According to an October 2014 Congressional Budget Office report, “How Initiatives to Reduce Fraud in Federal Health Care Programs Affect the Budget,” the amount of fraudulent payments recovered in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP alone during 2013 is more than $4 billion. The CBO is even bragging, saying that on the basis of the number of prosecutions and settlements in recent years, the whistleblower provisions of the FCA seem to be “particularly successful” in uncovering health care fraud and returning significant amounts of money to the U.S. Treasury and state governments.