“Sometimes you just get so frustrated about things that are wrong. These are the things that drive you, and you’re not going to stop until things are resolved.”

The case was in response to deceptive sales practices by Merck that flooded hospitals with the drugs Vioxx, Zocor, and Pepcid at heavily discounted prices in exchange for prescribing the medications for as many as three-quarters of eligible patients or being placed on a list of preferred medications. Many patients that rely on Medicaid were initially given prescriptions by hospitals at the cut-rate prices, only to have Medicaid foot the ongoing prescription cost at full price. This practice allowed Merck to gain advantage over its competitors making generic versions of the drugs in question. The practice also was in direct contradiction of the law that requires that pricing for the government be no more than for other customers.

The practice of gouging Medicaid for prescriptions which were written by doctors at hospitals given discounted pricing has been often called in to question recently. Many believe that dozens of drug companies may be guilty of this type of fraud. This case confirms that there are brave whistleblowers that are willing to take a stand and stop the taxpayer waste by drug companies.

If you are seeing Medicaid or other fraud on the government, contact us by calling 800-377-1812 for strictly confidential advice from experienced counsel, with no fee obligation.

from the Associated Press:
MONTGOMERY, Alabama – A state-court jury awarded Alabama $215 million in its Medicaid drug-price-fraud suit against an AstraZeneca PLC unit.

The state had claimed the unit, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, made Alabama’s Medicaid system pay too much for drugs prescribed to its patients by inflating prices. The firm said it had obtained for the state the best price it could for its drugs.

The circuit-court jury said the subsidiary must pay $40 million in compensatory damages and $175 million in punitive damages.

This type of Medicaid and Medicare fraud has been prevalent in recent years. Without the help of courageous whistleblowers, this fraud against the government would go on without consequence. If you are seeing fraud on the government, contact us via email or call (800) 377-1812 for strictly confidential advice from experienced counsel, with no fee obligation.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the hospital inflated Medicare charges to receive payments it wasn’t entitled to between January 1998 and August 2003. The allegations related to Medicare’s costliest treatments. Patients under such care are called ‘outliers’ because their needs stretch beyond typical parameters of the program.

Indicators have suggested that this is just another example of rampant Medicare Fraud. From The Morning Call:

Whistle-blowers have tipped off the government to $1.3 billion worth of fraud cases in the last year, largely at hospitals or other health care providers, the Justice Department said.

The department recovered $3.1 billion from individuals and companies during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2006.
In return, whistle-blowers were paid $190 million for alerting the government to the fraud.

For the basics on prevention and detection check out the US Department of Health’s Medicare Fraud page.

Bunny referred to the mismanagement of these matters as “the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.”

From The Washington Post:

Bunny Greenhouse was once the perfect bureaucrat, an insider, the top procurement official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Then the 61-year-old Greenhouse lost her $137,000-a-year post after questioning the plump contracts awarded to Halliburton in the run-up to the war in Iraq. It has made her easy to love for some, easy to loathe for others, but it has not made her easy to know.

In late August, she was demoted, her pay cut and her authority stripped. Her former bosses say it’s because of a years-long bout of poor work habits; she and her lawyer say it’s payback for her revelations about a politically connected company.

Now Bunnatine Hayes Greenhouse is becoming one of the most unusual things known in the upper echelons of government and industry — a top-shelf bureaucrat who is telling all she knows. For honesty’s sake, she says.

Read the rest of the story.

Over the course of his distinguished career as an auditor for the Interior Department, he recovered hundreds of millions of dollars from oil companies that were routinely and consistently underreporting royalty payments to the federal government. He was so successful at making the oil companies toe the line that he was eventually promoted to a position where he was supervising 120 people.

You’d think that someone who had been praised by the Secretary of the Interior as recently as 2003 for their outstanding job performance and leadership skills would have at least a little job security, but Bobby Maxwell recently found out that this isn’t always the case.

You see, Mr. Maxwell may have been fantastic at his job, and it would seem that he was trying to do the right thing by saving the government money, but it turns out that he recently may have stepped on a few toes by blowing the whistle on an oil company who has been accused of defrauding the government of millions of dollars. And, exactly one week after the lawsuit he is involved in became public knowledge, he was informed that his job was being eliminated in a “reorganization”.

The lawsuit, filed by Mr. Maxwell against the Kerr-McGee Corporation, accuses them of cheating the government out of millions of dollars in royalty payments. The Kerr-McGee Corporation is supposed to pay royalties for the oil that they pump out of public lands, and Bobby Maxwell was disappointed after reporting these underpayments and alleged fraudulent activities to the Interior Department. The Department did nothing.

So Bobby Maxwell decided to take matters into his own hands. He took the evidence that he had accumulated over the course of his investigations to his attorneys, and they filed suit against the Kerr-McGee Corporation in June 2004. The case was unsealed (became public knowledge) in January of 2005; a week later, he was informed that his position had been eliminated.

These are the risks that whistle-blowers are faced with in this modern age. By rocking the boat, Bobby knew that he was putting his career at risk. Even though there are ways to minimize the dangers involved in coming forward with their stories, whistle-blowers are sometimes caught in situations in which there are no easy answers. There is a tremendous amount of pressure by employers, even the Federal government, to prevent employees from becoming involved in lawsuits. But even though Bobby Maxwell was simply trying to save the government money, and trying to get Kerr-McGee Corporation to pay their fair share of what was owed, he still suffered by losing his job.

However, he knew the stakes, and although the risks were high, the reward is possibly even greater. If Bobby Maxwell eventually wins his case against the Kerr-McGee Corporation, the Federal Government will receive the majority of the money recovered – that’s how the False Claims Act works – but he will also collect a portion of the money recovered. Private citizens like Bobby Maxwell can sue under the False Claims Act on behalf of the government, which gives whistleblowers and people who have observed fraud against the government the means to reclaim money from the guilty party.

Because it is so difficult to successfully follow cases such as this one through the court system, and because it takes a large amount of time and effort, not to mention legal talent and expert witness fees, the False Claims Act has special provisions that generously reward the private citizen who has gone to such great lengths to stop these types of fraud from taking place. In Bobby Maxwell’s case, the stakes are enormous: Kerr-McGee Corporation could be forced to pay over $50 million dollars in penalties and unpaid royalties.

And, if he wins this case against Kerr-McGee and recovers that money for the government, the Federal False Claims Act states that these heroic citizens should share in the reward for their noble efforts: Bobby Maxwell would be eligible to keep up to 30 percent of the money recovered. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $16 million dollars! Of course, a portion of that money will then be used to cover his court fees, legal fees, and expert witness fees, but even so, by being brave enough to come forward and take a stand against Kerr-McGee, Bobby Maxwell stands to be amply rewarded for his trouble.

Would you be that brave, if you knew of fraud against the government? Would you take a stand, even though the risks were so great? I’d like to think that I would, but I’m not sure if I have the guts to be one of the Bobby Maxwell’s of this world.

If you or someone you know has witnessed fraud against the government, and you would like more information about how you can help stop these activities which costs taxpayers millions of dollars per year, please contact us for more information.

- Robert P. Christensen

www.rpcmnlaw.com

Medicare fraud, where doctors, HMO’s, or hospitals create frauludent items on patient invoices and submit them to Medicare for reimbursement, is a growing problem, and contributes to the enormous and rising costs of health care in this country. It is important for patients, family, and friends of people who use these services to report cases of suspected fraud.

If you’ve witnessed Medicare fraud in your workplace, you may be able to receive up to one-third of the money recovered in the fraud case under the Federal False Claims Act. And, you can sleep soundly at night, knowing that you did the right thing, and that you are helping lower health care costs for everyone by reporting the fraud to the people.

We can help you if you’ve witnessed this type of activity – contact us to receive information about what you can do to help stop these abuses.

This private plaintiff, who preferred to remain anonymous through what must have been a very lengthy and stressful ordeal, helped stop these abuses of the health care system, saving U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars. And, because the Federal False Claims Act stipulates that whistleblowers who catch large companies or individuals red-handed in the act of defrauding the government should be rewarded by up to 30% of the total amount awarded, this anonymous hero walked away with over twenty million dollars.

If you’ve seen fraud committed by your employer, or fraud committed by persons working for your company, don’t wait to report it. The sooner you get in touch with us, the sooner we can help you.

Kennedy interviews a former Diebold consultant who implicates Diebold in hijacking the electoral process in Georgia during the 2002 presidential election and a last-minute “patch” to the software running on the voting machines.

In late July, to speed deployment of the new machines, Cox quietly signed an agreement with Diebold that effectively privatized Georgia’s entire electoral system. The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state – all without any official supervision. “We ran the election,” says Hood. “We had 356 people that Diebold brought into the state. Diebold opened and closed the polls and tabulated the votes. Diebold convinced Cox that it would be best if the company ran everything due to the time constraints, and in the interest of a trouble-free election, she let us do it.

Then, one muggy day in mid-August, Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold’s election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a “patch,” a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. “We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn’t do,” Hood says. “The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done.

Georgia law mandates that any change made in voting machines be certified by the state. But thanks to Cox’s agreement with Diebold, the company was essentially allowed to certify itself. “It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state,” Hood told me. “We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level.

According to Hood, Diebold employees altered software in some 5,000 machines in DeKalb and Fulton counties – the state’s largest Democratic strongholds. To avoid detection, Hood and others on his team entered warehouses early in the morning. “We went in at 7:30 a.m. and were out by 11,” Hood says. “There was a universal key to unlock the machines, and it’s easy to get access. The machines in the warehouses were unlocked. We had control of everything. The state gave us the keys to the castle, so to speak, and they stayed out of our way.” Hood personally patched fifty-six machines and witnessed the patch being applied to more than 1,200 others.
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]]> http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/09/22/diebold_voting_machines/feed/ 0 http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/09/15/lockheed-whistleblower-takes-his-case-to-youtube/ http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/09/15/lockheed-whistleblower-takes-his-case-to-youtube/#comments Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:46:12 +0000 bob http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/11/25/lockheed-whistleblower-takes-his-case-to-youtube/ via The Washington Post:

Michael De Kort was frustrated.

The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen.

But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com.

[article continues below video]

“What I am going to tell you is going to seem preposterous,” De Kort solemnly tells viewers near the outset of the 10-minute clip. Posted three weeks ago, the video describes what De Kort says are blind spots in the ship’s security cameras, equipment that malfunctions in cold weather and other problems. “It may be very hard for you to believe that our government and the largest defense contractor in the world [are] capable of such alarming incompetence and can make ethical compromises as glaring as what I am going to describe.” In response to De Kort’s charges, a Coast Guard spokeswoman said the service has “taken the appropriate level of action.” A spokeswoman for the contractors said the allegations were without merit.

A Web site normally reserved for goofy home-movie outtakes and Paris Hilton parodies may seem an odd place to blow the whistle on potential national security lapses that require complex technical explanations. But receiving millions of hits a day and carrying the intimacy of video, YouTube.com and other sites have become an alluring venue for insiders like De Kort who want to go directly to the public when they think no one within the system is listening.

“This is an excellent example of the democratization of the media, where everyone has access to the printing press of the 21st century,” said Dina Kaplan, co-founder of Blip.tv, a site that hosts grass-roots television programming.

Kaplan, like others, was hard-pressed to think of another video like De Kort’s. “We have some people that come to mind that like to complain about government conspiracies,” she said. “But in terms of something truly substantive and credible, nothing springs to mind.”

De Kort knew his strategy for raising concerns about communications and surveillance systems on a 123-foot Coast Guard patrol boat was unorthodox. That was the point.

“My thought was, ‘What could I do that would be novel enough that it draws attention to itself, and through drawing attention to itself, something gets done?’ ” De Kort said in an interview from his home in Colorado. He is unemployed after being laid off by Lockheed Martin days after he posted the video. Lockheed said that the video did not influence the decision to lay off De Kort and that he had had been notified earlier this year that he would be out of a job.

As of late yesterday, his video had been viewed more than 8,000 times. That is low by YouTube standards, where a 42-second clip of a cat on a wheel received more than 800,000 views. But it is higher than might be expected for a video that features nothing more than a bearded, middle-age engineer talking into a camera and periodically glancing down at his prepared text.

The video also has caught the eye of people in high places. De Kort’s video has been covered by defense trade magazines, and yesterday, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter to the Coast Guard asking for an answer to De Kort’s “extremely distressing” allegations.

“I want to make sure that the product we paid for is a product that does not jeopardize our men and women in service,” Thompson said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office had launched an investigation into De Kort’s allegations before the video was released, and spokeswoman Tamara Faulkner said that inquiry should be completed in the next few months. Although De Kort said he believed the Coast Guard was not cooperating, Faulkner said she did not know of any problems.

Both Lockheed Martin and the Coast Guard have said the ship is safe. Eight of the cutters are now in use, and all were converted from obsolete ships as part of the Coast Guard’s $24 billion Deepwater program to rehabilitate ships.

“We’ve been aware of [De Kort's] concerns for some time,” said Mary Elder, spokeswoman for the program. “In each case we’ve reviewed them and taken the appropriate level of action. The Coast Guard takes seriously any concerns related to safety and national security.”

Margaret Mitchell-Jones, spokeswoman for the consortium between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman that runs Deepwater, said Lockheed Martin had investigated and “found the accusations to be without merit.”

“Anybody with a webcam and something to say, regardless of whether it’s true or not, can say it on YouTube,” she said, adding that the company would not ask the site to take the video down.

Another Lockheed Martin spokeswoman confirmed that De Kort had worked for the company and had been an engineer on the Deepwater project.

De Kort said he realized within about a month of beginning work on the ship that the project had serious flaws. Among them, he said, was that the ship’s surveillance system had blind spots that exposed crew members to the possibility of attack. He also said that the ship’s supposedly secure communications system was susceptible to eavesdropping and that some of its equipment will not work in extreme cold despite a requirement that everything function at minus 40 degrees.

De Kort said he tried to alert the chain of command at the Coast Guard and at Lockheed about the problems but was rebuffed by supervisors who told him to keep quiet because the program was behind schedule and over budget. De Kort was eventually transferred off the project, and he was laid off earlier this month. A company spokeswoman said he was laid off for financial reasons, but De Kort insists it was in retaliation for his complaints.

“The formal systems that whistle-blowers are expected to use have failed. That’s why you’re seeing people be creative like this,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. “This is a tremendous way for someone brave enough to do it to say something directly and not have to go through a filter.”

Other watchdog groups were less impressed.

Patrick Burns, spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, said suing for fraud is ultimately a lot more effective than being “the serious guy in a room full of clowns.”

“I recommend buttoning up your lip, Xeroxing paper and filing a case,” Burns said.

]]> http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/09/15/lockheed-whistleblower-takes-his-case-to-youtube/feed/ 0 http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/04/13/a-whistleblower-with-courage/ http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/04/13/a-whistleblower-with-courage/#comments Thu, 13 Apr 2006 20:18:14 +0000 bob http://www.false-claims-act.com/2006/04/13/a-whistleblower-with-courage/ A man contacted us about 20 years ago with a moral dilemma. His employer was engaged in a bait and switch scheme and had asked him to lie to the customer. He refused to do this and sued his employer after he was fired. A jury was outraged and returned a verdict in his favor of well over 1 million dollars including punitive damages.

Whistleblowers are usually in a tight spot but they are the moral compass of society. If you are aware that your employer is committing government fraud, you can do the right thing and contact us. We will help you. We will be confidential and can see you through this.

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