Fraud By The Numbers

Fraud By The Numbers Series

  • Reading the Winds: The SEC’s Cybersecurity Program After SolarWinds

    Cybersecurity is—or should be—the focus of growing concern among companies in all sectors of the economy. A serious breach, or even a hint of vulnerability, can cost a company millions, in direct costs, lost customer trust, and ultimately, lost value. Consequently, a company’s cybersecurity record is increasingly important to its market position and increasingly of…

  • Recent Developments in False Claims Act Constitutionality

    Though qui tam constitutionality has been challenged for decades, two cases, Polansky and Zafirov, are setting the tone for the modern debate. In June 2023, the Supreme Court issued a decision in U.S. ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, Inc. The case reached the Supreme Court after the circuit court affirmed the district court’s…

  • A Brief History of False Claims Act Constitutionality

    The False Claims Act (FCA) prohibits the submission of false or fraudulent claims to the United States government. The FCA includes a qui tam provision, which allows private individuals who allege that a defendant submitted false claims to file a case and pursue damages on the government’s behalf. These individuals, known as “relators,” file a…

  • The Middle District of Florida Court Finds the Qui Tam Provision of the False Claims Act Unconstitutional because a Relator is an “Officer” of the United States

    Despite all previous Circuit Courts holding that the FCA is constitutional under Article II, the court held that an FCA relator is an officer of the United States must be appointed and dismissed the case. On September 30, 2024, the Middle District of Florida granted the defendants’ Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings in United…

  • More Resources Are Needed in the Fight on Fraud

    ­­Over the last month, Fraud by the Numbers has emphasized the vast problem of fraud on the government and our financial markets – fraud that is not just taking money out of your pockets, but is causing harm to patients, members of our military, and the stability of our financial systems and future – and contrasted it…

  • An Ounce of Prevention is Worth Billions for a Cure

    Were you stuck in an airport this summer when flights around the world were grounded by a security update by Crowdstrike that took out computers at airports, hospitals and financial institutions? Preliminary damage estimates from that incident are already more than $5.4 billion. Or maybe you were impacted by the Change Healthcare hack that impacted…

  • Which U.S. Attorneys’ Offices Brought in the Highest Recoveries in the Past Five Years?

    That’s the question we wanted to answer, by reviewing settlements and judgments in False Claims Act cases by each U.S. Attorney’s office. The last time Fraud by the Numbers reported on the U.S. Attorney’s offices, we looked at the full history back to the institution of the modern version of the Act amended in 1986.…

  • DOJ’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative: A Milestone in Cybersecurity Enforcement

    DOJ’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative: A Milestone in Cybersecurity Enforcement In October 2021, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) launched its Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative, a pioneering effort to use the False Claims Act to prosecute (1) government vendors that knowingly provide the government deficient cybersecurity products and services, and (2) government contractors that knowingly misrepresent their cybersecurity…

  • The Government Spends Much Less on Fraud Cases than Big Companies Spend Defending Them

    As we have previously discussed on Fraud by the Numbers, the government has a limited number of lawyers working on False Claims Act (FCA) cases. For each FCA case that is filed, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) assigns an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the federal district court in which…

  • Pill Talk: Negotiating, Lobbying, and Inflating Drug Prices

    The government spends a lot of money on Medicare and Medicaid. And the numbers are only getting larger. By 2030, it is projected that Medicaid spending will exceed $700 billion. A massive portion of this spending goes towards prescription drugs. How did we get here, and is it possible to reduce the government spending? Pharmacy…