According to a DOJ news release, the U.S. has partially intervened in a false claims lawsuit against Florida-based Halifax Hospital Medical Center. The allegations state that Halifax violated the Stark Law, which “prohibits a hospital from billing Medicare for services referred by physicians that have an improper financial relationship with the hospital.”
The SEC has banned its employees from destroying anymore investigative documents, as damage control takes place after an SEC attorney blew the whistle on the agency’s mass destruction or records. Senator Grassley states, “[t]his agency has been in knots over its documents policy… [t]he agency and the National Archives need to determine what records have to be kept, both for what’s logical for investigations and what’s necessary under federal law.”
Read more at: http://www.executivegov.com/2011/09/sec-bans-document-destruction-after-whistleblower-cries-foul/
The indictment of two individuals in Houston, TX, who were charged $62 million with Medicare fraud, was the beginning to the “nationwide takedown” that took place during the week of September 5th. The takedown, announced by Attorney General Eric Holder, involved Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in seven other cities. The task force ended up charging 91 individuals with various Medicare fraud-related offenses, which included $295 million of fraudulent billings. This is the largest amount of phony claims found in a single takedown in Strike Force history.
Read more at: http://www.examiner.com/domestic-crimes-in-national/medicare-fraud-takedown-feds-target-295-million-false-medicare-claims
A whistleblower is an individual who discloses information about wrongdoing. Often, the whistleblower does so even though the wrongdoing that s/he witnesses is considered the norm or accepted behavior for that particular environment. Because the wrongdoing is — unfortunately—considered accepted behavior, the decision to blow the whistle is a difficult one. Those in the whistleblower’s immediate environment often try to convince the whistleblower that what s/he believes is unethical, or indeed illegal, is acceptable and legal. Whistleblowers question themselves and seek information to either validate their own conclusions or to question their conclusions. This website was in part developed as a tool for whistleblowers to help them through this dilemma.
In a whistleblower lawsuit, the U.S. alleges that a leading company in drug making and distribution defrauded government healthcare systems by engaging in a nationwide illegal drug-switching scheme. The whistleblower lawsuit became public this week in a Chicago federal court. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have joined the lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act.
Read more at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-09-06/mylan-units-implicated-in-u-s-lawuit-against-par-alleging-drug-switching.html