According to a recent study published by Andrew C. Hall, Gerald S. Martin, Nathan Y. Sharp and Jaron H. Wilde, when qui tam whistleblowers participate in financial misrepresentation enforcement actions, the wrongdoers face significantly increased penalties and prison time.
The study’s authors analyzed over a thousand qui tam financial fraud enforcement actions between 1978 and 2012 and determined 145 cases (almost 13% of the total) involved whistleblower information. Due to whistleblowers’ assistance, the government obtained an additional $20.75 to $21.27 billion in judgments, the study estimates. Prison sentences for guilty corporate executives and managers also increased by roughly two years when qui tam whistleblowers were linked with the enforcement action. [Read more…]
The SEC Division of Enforcement recently released its 
The 
On November 4, 2013, after nearly six years of litigation, Johnson & Johnson, the self-proclaimed “family company,” agreed to pay $149 million to the federal government, the states of California, Kentucky, Indiana, and Massachusetts, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, to settle Medicaid fraud claims under the False Claims Act. (
According to a press release issued by the Department of Justice, the federal government recovered over $3.8 billion from False Claims Act cases in 2013. Of the $3.8 billion, $2.9 billion resulted from whistleblower suits filed under the qui tam provisions of the Act. This is the fourth year in a row recoveries under the False Claims Act have topped $3 billion, and this year’s number is surpassed only by last year’s record-breaking recovery of nearly $5 billion. Although health care fraud continues to drive record recoveries, this year prosecutions of procurement and defense contracting fraud returned a record setting $890 million to the U.S. Treasury.