Fraud By The Numbers

Fraud By The Numbers Series

  • There Are Nearly 300,000 Civil Cases In The US Each Year, How Many Are False Claims Act Cases?

    Yesterday, we debunked the myth that whistleblowers are overly compensated for their role in reporting fraud on the government. Today, we will look at another common attack on whistleblowers–that they file too many False Claims Act cases. Numbers from the federal judiciary show why those complaints are unfounded. There is a massive amount of civil…

  • How Much Do Whistleblowers Make From False Claims Act Cases?

    Here are the facts. Companies who contract with the government, or organizations that support those contractors, would have you believe whistleblowers are reaping huge windfalls when they expose fraud on the government. The data simply does not bear that out. From fiscal years 1987 through 2005, the median relator share was $123,885. By 2009, this…

  • The Cinderella of Government Spending: Non-Defense Contracting

    When the federal government spends $1.3 trillion on Medicare and $676 billion on defense a year, it’s easy for fraud on those programs to take center stage. They are important programs, and those are massive dollar amounts. However, behind those two behemoth numbers, there are different ways the government spends its money that leave it…

  • Billions Are Lost to Small Business Fraud

    Small businesses are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy: they create two-thirds of net new jobs and drive U.S. innovation and competitiveness while accounting for 44 percent of U.S. economic activity. Congress has recognized that the federal government—which spends hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts each year—can play an important role in supporting and…

  • The Need For Whistleblowers in the Motor Vehicle Industry

    It will not surprise you to learn that the motor vehicle industry is big business. Toyota’s global revenue for the fiscal year before the pandemic was more than $274 billion, with North American Vehicle sales at 2.7 million units. Ford had $127 billion in revenue for the calendar year 2020 during the pandemic and announced…

  • Troubling Trends in Defense False Claims Act Cases

    Over the past three decades, the Department of Defense budget has more than doubled, growing from $287.4 in fiscal year 1987 to $723.2 billion in fiscal year 2020. Of the 2020 amount, an estimated $420 billion was spent on private contractors. As described in yesterday’s post, fraud remains a major area of concern in the…

  • The Need for More Whistleblowers In The Defense Industry

    Although we’ve been discussing healthcare fraud a lot during this month, the original purpose of the 1863 False Claims Act and the 1986 amendments that modernized the statute had one particular aim: to combat fraud in defense spending. Since 1986, defense spending has continued to grow, as has the reliance on private contractors. Over the…

  • How Over $1 Trillion In State Government Spending Is Vulnerable to Fraud

    Many people know that the federal and state False Claims Acts are potent tools in the fight against healthcare fraud, but some may not realize that these statutes can also apply outside the healthcare realm. The 50 states and DC allocate about 68 percent of their total budgets to non-healthcare programs. As we’ve discussed earlier…

  • Private Insurers May Dole More Than $200 Billion Each Year to Fraudsters

    The federal and state False Claims Acts permit whistleblowers to file lawsuits alleging that someone has committed fraud against the government. In the context of healthcare, this means government healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But private health insurance companies are also susceptible to fraud. Private health insurance plays a significant role in America’s…

  • Let’s Take a Look at Fraud Against State Medicaid Programs

    In the last few days, we’ve been discussing the impact of fraud on the federal healthcare programs, but whistleblowers also play an important role in fighting fraud in state healthcare programs like Medicaid. Some experts estimate that fraud accounts for as much as 20 percent of government healthcare spending.[1] This means that, through Medicaid and…