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Former sales executive with Champion Industries, William Burch, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for giving bogus evidence to federal prosecutors in a whistleblower investigation against Champion Industries. Burch forged a letter from competitor Honeywell to support the whistleblower suit he filed in 2008, which implied that Honeywell had notified Champion of a planned price increase in oil filters, before the information became public. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Crawley stated that the grand-jury investigation that resulted from the forged evidence provided by Burch cost the government more than $83,000 and “perverted the criminal investigative process.”

Read more at: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/132632393.html

Software company Oracle Corp. and Oracle America will pay $199.5 million plus interest to the General Services Administration. The settlement is expected to be the largest false claims settlement ever collected by the General Services Administration. The settlement falls under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, as the company failed to meet its contractual obligations regarding a 1998 agreement with GSA.

Read more at: http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/10/07/oracle-settlement-gsa-false-claims-lawsuit.aspx

News Corp. has established an internal whistleblower system in the form of a 24-hour “alertline,” which is meant for employees to report company violations. This action comes in the aftermath of the News of the World incident that involved Murdoch employees bribing police officers to obtain protected documents. The new hotline will also ensure that whistleblowers be protected from retaliation.

Read more at: http://www.inquisitr.com/148916/news-corp-sets-up-internal-whistleblower-hotline/

The chairman of a Senate consumer-protection panel has called on the DOJ and the Department of Veterans Affairs to release any internal investigations regarding the lawsuit accusing 13 major banks of defrauding veterans from hundreds of millions of dollars with illegal fees to refinance home loans. Chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Panel Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) states, “We learned that abuses of veterans may run even deeper than we previously knew.”
Read more at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2016429296_realvets09.html

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington has filed a false claims case against George Peterson, Vice President of Kennewick Industrial & Electrical Supply Inc. The U.S. alleges that Peterson engaged in kickback and fraud schemes, which led to defrauding the Department of Energy of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 
Read more at: http://www.keprtv.com/news/local/131023563.html