Fraud By The Numbers

Fraud By The Numbers Series

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 24

    Earlier this year, the Internal Revenue Service Whistleblower Office released its Annual Report with an encouraging word from the program’s director. In the report, Director Hinman reiterated the IRS’s support for whistleblowers, and said that the agency “uses increasingly sophisticated data analytics and other methods to detect non-compliance with tax laws, but we can’t find…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 23

    We see whistleblowers in the news every day, like Michael Bawduniak (who blew the whistle on Biogen’s kickback schemes) and Frances Haugen (who shared Facebook’s secrets with the world). But these high-profile whistleblowers are the exception, not the rule, as are both the costs and rewards these publicly lauded figures incur. The DOJ doesn’t provide…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 22

    Each year the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) prepares a report of what the government bought the year before, the “Snapshot of Government-Wide Contracting.”  It summarizes data reported to the Federal Procurement Data System on obligations made via “procurement contracts.”[1]  According to the GAO, the federal government contracted for $694 Billion in services and products in…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 21

    Public pharmaceutical companies in the US regularly report out-sized revenues, but they face growing criticism for the very unpublic way they arrive at their drug prices. According to a survey of 1,000 American consumers, “77% believe that the consumer prices of drugs are unreasonably high,” and nearly the same number – 73% – said their…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 20

    Fraud has been with us for as long as people have used their imagination to fool their fellows with falsity. Huge amounts of money have been lost to fraud. In the modern era, since governments spend more than almost anyone else, governments are also among the biggest victims of fraud. For example, under its principal…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 19

    What do such recognizable companies as T-Mobile, ChatGPT, Chick-fil-A, Google Fi, and MailChimp all have in common? These companies (alongside many others) have all been victims of major data breaches so far this year.[1] In an increasingly digital landscape, the threat of cyberattacks has emerged as a pressing concern for businesses and investors alike, carrying…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 18

    The False Claims Act has become an increasingly important tool in the government’s fight against evasions of customs duties and tariffs.  And qui tam lawsuits are fundamental to that effort.  As demonstrated by a recently-published study of settlements of customs-related False Claims Act cases, the government has recovered more than $220 million over the past…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 17

    As the old adage goes, “Where money flows, fraud follows.” This has certainly been true in the cryptocurrency world. According to CoinMarketCap.com, the value of all existing cryptocurrency is over a trillion dollars as of September 15, 2023, with around $508 billion of that being attributed to Bitcoin. The size of the Bitcoin blockchain is…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 16

    As we highlighted in last year’s series, Medicare paid a total of $13.5 billion for medical equipment. The billions spent on these multiple and single-use devices have proven to be a ripe target for fraud: – In 2021, St. Jude paid $27 million for allegedly selling defective heart devices. – In the same year, two…

  • Fraud By The Numbers 2023 – Sept. 15

    In our September 2 post on the troubling decline in False Claims Act –recoveries in recent years, we highlighted the growing importance of declined False Claims Act cases in recovering government money lost to fraud. “Declined cases” are FCA cases brought by whistleblowers under the qui tam provision where the United States Government has “declined”…