The SEC Division of Enforcement recently released its fiscal year 2016 budget request, providing a detailed account of the Division’s activities during FY 2014 as well as an estimated budget for upcoming years.
Of particular note, the Division set a record by obtaining judgments worth more than $4.16 billion in disgorgement and penalties. The Office of the Whistleblower received approximately 3,600 leads from whistleblowers (more tips than ever before), made the largest number of awards, and announced its largest single award ever to an individual ($30 million). During the same time period, the Division’s total costs came in around $455 million. Thus, for every dollar spent, the Division returned more than nine times that amount.
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.