Special: Article Explaining the 2010 False Claims Act and State False Claims Acts

Three years ago, our whistleblower lawyer blog presented an in-depth article discussing the nation’s major whistleblower law, the False Claims Act, and the wave of new state False Claims Acts.

Since then in 2009-2010, Congress has amended the False Claims Act three times to remove obstacles created by courts, which had limited the law’s effectiveness. To reflect those important and needed changes in the law, I have updated this article to present at the 2010 Fraud and Compliance Forum sponsored by the American Health Lawyers Association and Health Care Compliance Association.

That detailed article is excerpted here to explain the False Claims Act, with its 2009-2010 amendments. For ease of reading, it is divided into six parts:

Part 1: Introduction: What You Should Know About the False Claims Act And New State False Claims Acts After the 2009-2010 Amendments

Part 2: The False Claims Act and the Increasing Number of State False Claims Acts

Part 3: The False Claims Act: Background & History

Part 4: How the False Claims Act Works After the 2009-2010 Amendments (with Comparisons to Some State False Claims Acts)

Part 5: The Trend of Recoveries Under the False Claims Act

Part 6: States’ Experiences With Their Own False Claims Acts

If you have any questions about a potential False Claims Act case, please feel free to contact us at 800-228-9159, or send an email through the link here.

Since the late 1980s, our attorneys have worked with the nation’s major whistleblower law, the False Claims Act. We have represented whistleblowers who reported fraud and false claims in Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care programs; various government procurement programs, including contractor fraud in military defense contracts, NASA programs, Hurricane Katrina and other disaster relief, and research grants and cooperative agreements. Our attorneys are frequently ask to speak at conferences on the False Claims Act.

In addition, since the dawn of the new IRS Whistleblower Program, our whistleblower lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP also have represented whistleblowers in the new program. We have represented clients with IRS Whistleblower claims in the hedge fund industry, other financial services industries, real estate, manufacturing, and many other industries, many involving complex offshore transactions. We have also presented programs with the IRS Whistleblower Office staff to train lawyers on best practices in pursuing IRS Whistleblower claims. The IRS Whistleblower claims that we have submitted involve billions of dollars in tax liabilities.

Based on our firm’s long experience in representing whistleblowers, we were asked by the Senate Banking Committee staff for input in how the new SEC whistleblower and CFTC whistleblower provisions of the July 2010 Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act should work. We urged that the Senate change the weak House version, which provided no meaningful rewards to whistleblowers, in favor of an enforceable right for SEC and CFTC whistleblowers to a significant reward.

Fortunately, that approach is now the law. We are now working on select Dodd-Frank SEC whistleblower matters, as well as our False Claims Act and IRS whistleblower cases.

For a free consultation about a whistleblower case, please call us at 800-228-9159, or click here to contact us by email.