Recently I mentioned state Sen. Obenschain’s website addressing fraud, waste and abuse in the Virginia Department of Transportation. I wanted also to point out some excellent federal resources on the topic.
For a number of years, the OIG (that is, the Office of the Inspector General) of the U.S. Department of Transportation has maintained www.preventtransportationfraud.org which is the single best site I know of dealing with the topic of fraud in transportation contracts.
I say this is the best site because it provides a wide variety of specific information, including flyers addressing some of the specific types of wrongdoing that would subject a person to liability under the qui tam provisions of the Federal False Claims Act and the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.
Some examples:
On the Topic of Transportation Fraud….
Congressional Testimony in Support of the False Claims Correction Act of 2009
In the past two months, two House bills and two Senate bills have been introduced in an effort to strengthen the Federal False Claims Act. These bills respectively are:
- S. 386, “Fraud Enforcement and recovery Act of 2009,” (Feb. 5, 2009);
- H.R. 1788, “False Claims Correction Act of 2009,” (Mar. 30, 2009);
- S. 458, “False Claims Clarification Act of 2009,” (Feb. 24, 2009); and
- H.R. 1667, “War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2009,” (Mar. 23, 2009).
Testimony took place yesterday, and Jeb White from TAF here. Marsha Madsen testified on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce against the legislation.
At the Committee level, only Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas seemed to be buying the arguments of the Chamber of Commerce. Congressman Dan Lungren (R-Ca), on the other hand, not only spoke up for the FCA, but also for its proud history and its ties to Lincoln and Reagan.
Updates–hopefully, positive ones–will follow.
A New Defense for Fraudfeasors Emerges from the Maryland Legislature: “Your Honor, I was just trying to create jobs.”
As readers of this blog know, I have pushed heavily for a Maryland False Claims Act for the last two years. Both years, after much debate, a Maryland state FCA failed by a single vote in the state Senate.
This year, however, the Senate chamber reached an all-new level of stupidity. The Senator casting the final vote actually said something along the lines of “The last thing we need to do in this economy is create new penalties for people trying to create jobs.” So, Marylanders, you can let the false claims fly for government money, as long as you are creating jobs. The Baltimore Sun has the full, sordid, story.
What makes it all the more ironic is that, even if we assume for the purposes of argument that a False Claims Act makes a state less business-friendly, Maryland has already done almost everything it can do to make itself less friendly to big business. For example, by creating its own employment standards more favorable than the federal standards (i.e., under the Maryland Wage and Hour Law, the Maryland Human Rights Act, etc.) Maryland gives out of state companies looking to relocate to the D.C. metro area an entirely new set of regulations and laws to sort through.
It is widely known, of course, that varying employment standards are disfavored by big business, and I don’t blame them. If I were in Alabama, or Washington state, or New Mexico, and a client asked me to help them open a new branch office in the D.C. metro area, I would want to be familiar with the local laws and regulations in a given state when I made my decision. Most employers are familiar with federal standards, and so I would look for a place that follows those, like Virginia.
Maryland, on the other hand, has made the federal standard more favorable to the employee in almost every situation. For example, under the federal FLSA, an employee is entitled to double damages on an unpaid wage claim. Under the Maryland Wage and Hour Act, the employee can get treble damages.
What’s really funny is this: the Maryland Senate’s goal was to make Maryland more attractive to new business, and they will achieve that goal. But it will be the wrong kind of business, because Maryland will now be more likely to attract fraudfeasors than neighboring Virginia and D.C. In fact, for people with fraud as a business model, there is only one choice in the D.C. metro area, and it isn’t Virginia or D.C.
The actual truth is that qui tam laws and False Claims Act statutes are business friendly, and help to foster a more competitive business environment. Among many other reasons, qui tam and FCA statutes make a level playing field, and help to enforce the rules of doing business with the government.
For example, if you bid on government business, and you follow the rules and only make an honest bid, you are at a disadvantage against those less scrupulous members of the community that will make a dishonest bid. Qui tam states have less people making dishonest bids, because the potential damages are so high.
Now, of course, in Maryland, if someone falsely certifies their bid to the government for a contract, the penalty that would apply would be a mere slap on the wrist, probably a misdemeanor crime or something similar. In Virginia, however, a false certification on a bid for a government contract would subject the false bidder to damages in the amount of three times the value of the contract, plus a civil penalty of between $5,500 and $11,000 for each invoice submitted under the contract, plus attorney’s fees and costs.
And if our fraudfeasor discriminated against an employee who refused to go along with a fraud scheme, the fraudfeasor would owe the employee two times their back wages, in addition to all of the above.
It is a fact that Maryland will almost certainly get new business from this, and you know what? They are welcome to it.
How is this relevant to Virginia? For one, Attorney General candidate David Foster has made “job creation” a central plank of his campaign for the Republican nomination for Attorney General. He has left the details vague, but his campaign has focused on his knowledge of big business and its ways, and on his ability to use this knowledge to bring new business to Virginia.
I certainly hope that Foster isn’t referring to the same kind of job creation strategy that Maryland has apparently embraced. Mr. Foster, would you or anyone in your campaign care to comment about whether your strategy for job creation is similar to Maryland’s?
New Virginia Website Attempts to Expose VDOT Waste
An interesting new website by state Sen. Mark Obenshain has the goal of exposing waste, fraud and abuse in the Virginia Department of Transportation.
No question about it, government spending always results in a certain level of fraud, waste, and abuse. That is why we have tools like the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (Va. Code sec. 8.01-216.1 et seq.) Like the federal False Claims Act (31 U.S.C.S. sec. 3729 et seq.), the VFATA gives our Attorney General a powerful fraud-fighting tool, which can be used whenever someone is caught making a false claim to the Commonwealth for money.
When someone is caught violating its terms, they don’t just pay one time–they pay three times the amount of the damages sustained by the Commonwealth, because the VFATA requires treble damages. Further, the VFATA includes a civil penalty of between $5,500 and $11,000 for each individual false claim–this amount is added on top of the treble damages. Finally, defendants pay all attorney’s fees and costs of the prosecution.
Best of all, the statute provides that when individuals have first-hand, non-public knowledge of fraud on the Commonwealth, they have the authority to come forward, hire private counsel with experience in the VFATA, and work with their lawyer and the OAG to prosecute the case. Individuals who do this are eligible to receive a share of the Commonwealth’s recovery, usually somewhere between 15 and 30%.
In one of my recent cases, for example, my client, Nisar Siddiqui, has to date received just under $150,000 for information be brought to the Commonwealth’s attention through his qui tam suit. Because most qui tam cases begin when a person finds fraud on the government by their employer, the statute also contains protections for the employment of people who find fraud on the government in their workplace.
Simply put, people with first-hand, non-public knowledge of fraud against the Commonwealth should contact a private qui tam attorney with experience litigating Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act cases and/or federal False Claims Act cases. In addition to receiving compensation for sticking your neck out, you will do far, far more to rectify the larger problem of fraud on the state budget that way than you will be sending an email to your state Senator.
IMHO, the biggest factor leading to fraud on the Commonwealth is our complete lack of civil enforcement from the OAG. (That is, of course, outside of the award winning MFCU unit within the OAG). People doing business with Virginia have little reason to fear prosecution for wrongdoing–to date, the OAG has never initiated a non-health care VFATA case on its own.
It is interesting then, that instead of trying to do something to further the use of the VFATA, Sen. Obenschain would chose to put up his website.
He should be either (1) supporting John Brownlee for Attorney General of the Commonwealth or (2) using his influence to make VFATA enforcement an issue if he is serious about fighting back against fraud on our state budget.
I don’t mean to seem like I am picking on Sen. Obenschain, at least he is trying to do something. Senator, please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss.
Qui Tam Practice Example: Use of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act to Combat Fraud in State Grants
An article in yesterday’s Lynchburg News and Advance provides a great chance to look at some potential uses of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act by the Virginia Attorney General’s Office. We will also examine how qui tam relators can come forward in the future with evidence of false claims to a grant program.
To be clear, most of the facts discussed herein occurred roughly a decade ago, and as such they are well outside the statute of limitations. Also, the VFATA did not become law until Jan. 1, 2003, so it was not an option for Attorney General Mark Early, who served as AG at the time. Still, this example will hopefully prove illustrative.
For those of you who don’t recall, the National D-Day Foundation was formed to raise the money necessary to build and maintain the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. The Foundation underwent a tumultuous period when it was first formed the early part of this decade. Various actions by Richard Burrow resulted in federal criminal charges by then-U.S. Attorney John Brownlee. Those charges were tried and ended in a hung jury. (Jury verdicts in federal cases must unanimous; when the jury cannot agree amongst themselves, the result is a hung jury). After a hung jury, the defendant walks free, and the government is free to begin the process again.
After the first hung jury, Brownlee obtained a second set of charges, and proceeded to trial. The second trial also ended in a hung jury. After the second hung jury, Brownlee announced that no new charges would be pursued. There is, of course, no shame in any of that for the U.S. Attorney’s Office or for Brownlee. The prosecution of white-collar crimes is almost always difficult, because the burden of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt” and because such prosecutions involve educated professionals–accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc.–who must be able to exercise a certain amount of professional discretion as part of their work.
White-collar criminal defendants normally try to use one of a couple approaches. First, they can try to convince a jury that while they may have used poor discretion–and may have engaged in “edgy” business practices, the government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they broke any laws.
Alternatively, they can try what I call the “Aw, shucks” defense–this one consists of blaming someone else and trying to convince the jury that you were in over your head, and were easily snookered by a clever co-worker, or business partner, etc.
Also, by any account, Brownlee did the right thing professionally by not continuing to prosecute a case after a jury disagreed about the guilt of Mr. Burrrow two times in a row.
To be clear, there is no question that Burrow engaged in activities that were untoward. Burrow asserted strategy number one above, and thus the question all along was whether the government could prove, beyond a reasonable doubt that Burrow’s actions amounted to a crime, or whether his actions merely constituted questionable business practices.
And that is where the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act can be used in the future, in the same way that the federal government uses the Federal False Claims Act. The VFATA and FCA are tailor-made to prosecute cases of dishonest business practices.
The most prominent example for our purposes today is a $3.5 million grant Burrow obtained from the Commonwealth of Virginia in the year 2000. The grant from Virginia was a “matching grant.” In other words, in order to get this grant from Virginia, Burrow had to show that the Foundation had raised an equivalent amount of private money. Then, and only then, would the Foundation get the $3.5 million approved by the Virginia Legislature.
In other words, raising $3.5 million was a mandatory “condition of participation” in the grant program. The problem was the Burrow and the Foundation had not raised the $3.5 million they needed. So, instead of rolling up his shirt sleeves and going to work–or instead of simply foregoing the $3.5 million grant–Burrow discreetly obtained a loan from a small California bank, and used that money to pad out the accounts of the Foundation.
Then, in the grant application, he showed deposits of the loan money as donations in the amount of $3.5 million. The Commonwealth had no reason to think he had not actually raised $3.5 million in private donations, and the matching $3.5 million grant was quickly approved and paid. Burrow then paid the loan back to the bank.
Later, Harrison, the Foundation’s legal counsel, would testify via a sworn declaration as to the following: “I ignored clear warnings and signs that Burrow was intentionally defrauding the State of Virginia,” according to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s office in 2003. The declaration continued: “I was willfully blind to the fact that the loan had to be repaid in only 90 days, and that the Foundation did not have the required matching funds to obtain the state grant.”
The Foundation was required to raise $3.5 million in private money in order to participate in the Virginia grant program–that requirement was a condition of participation, just a like a requirement in a contract. Conditions of participation contain important statements of government policy, and violations of those terms are serious matters. In this case, Virginia’s requirement that the $3.5 million grant be matched by private funds has a clear purpose–the Legislature wants to give money only to projects that are going to succeed, and one clear indicator of success is the amount of private funds raised.
And that is where the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act could have played a role in this case, if it had been law at the time. Like the Federal False Claims Act, the VFATA should be used to prosecute clear wrongdoing that does not quite rise to the level of a crime. Our system of laws places a high–almost impossible–burden on criminal prosecutions; but with the false claims act, proof is required only by a preponderance of the evidence, making it an effective tool to root out fraud against the public fisc.
The fact that the burden for civil false claims prosecutions is “preponderance of the evidence” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt” is sometimes cited by people trying to find fault with the VFATA or the FCA. More often than not, this issue raised by those who have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
It is true that if you do business with the government, you run a risk of potentially huge liability for engaging in actions that might be totally acceptable in a contract between two private parties. You can be on the hook for enormous amounts of money in the form of treble damages, large civil penalties, mandatory attorney’s fees, and other damages for making false claims to the government. And it is true that the prosecution, whether done by a qui tam relator and private counsel, or by the government, or both, will only have to prove its claims by a preponderance of the evidence.
The simple fact is that constant vigilance is the price that private parties must pay for doing business with the government. If you don’t like it, don’t do business with the government. Make no mistake about it–the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act and the Federal False Claims Act are designed to make constant vigilance by contractors a “condition of participation” in government business.
Zach Kitts
Cook & Kitts, PLLC
Yet Another Reminder About Attorney Fees Petitions
The Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly blog has a post today relating to the use of the Laffey-Matrix in fee shifting cases. It is not clear whether the Laffey Matrix at issue is the real Laffey Matrix (that is, the one prepared by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division) or the Laffey Matrix prepared by a private-sector expert economist.
Actually, the blog post–like the Fourth Circuit’s recent opinion–has little to do with “the Matrix.” Instead, the opinion has more to do with the Fourth Circuit’s on-going refusal to award attorney’s fees at a particular hourly rate without some evidence to support that rate as reasonable.
In Robinson v. Equifax Information Services, Judge Lee in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia awarded an attorney $268,652 in attorney’s fees on a $200,000 damage award under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The FCRA carries a mandatory attorney’s fees provision, requiring a losing defendant to pay all of the reasonable attorney’s fees incurred by a plaintiff.
The real Laffey Matrix is prepared each by the U.S. Department of Justice, and sets forth the reasonable market-supported attorney’s fees for the D.C. area. The plaintiff’s attorneys wisely attached a copy of the most recent Laffey Matrix with their attorney’s fee petition.
They failed to include evidence that the Laffey Matrix rate was a reasonable one for their work. Such evidence is normally provide by way of an Mixx Delicious Digg Facebook Twitter
Special Report on last week’s “IRS Whistleblower Bootcamp”
I attended the first seminar on the new IRS Whistleblower statute last week, and found it very interesting indeed. The seminar was organized by Taxpayers Against Fraud, and featured presentations from the top officials from the newly-created IRS Whistleblower Office, along with top attorneys and accountants from the private sector.
And that, of course, was one of the chief purposes behind the seminar–to begin creating a community around the new IRS Whistleblower law, and to allow the major players to meet each other. As we have seen with qui tam practice under the Federal False Claims Act, such communities enable the free exchange of ideas, and aid the growth of the public-private partnership that is vital to the ultimate success of the program.
Most attorneys in qui tam practice have very little experience with tax issues, and one of the chief lessons I learned from the seminar was the necessity of experience with tax matters to this area of practice–or at least, the willingness, desire, and time to learn tax law.
First, a little background. Section 7623 of the Internal Revenue Code, which generally requires the IRS to pay awards to whistleblowers, was enacted in 2006. The law sets award ranges based on the percentage of proceeds collected as a result of the whistleblower’s information, and also creates a brand-new office within the IRS, known as the Whistleblower Office.
In February of 2007, Stephen Whitlock became the first Director of the IRS Whistleblower Office. His day to day work includes oversight and development of the IRS Whistleblower program, and he is apparently doing a very fine job. I say that because the office handled 80 claims during the first year of the program, and more than 1,500 claims last year. Accordingly, the size of his office has increased 250% to deal with the flood of interesting new cases.
In a nutshell, IRC Section 7623 allows private individuals with first-hand information about tax fraud to take action to stop it, and receive a reward in the process. Such an individual is required to file an IRS Form 211 along with all evidence in that person’s possession. The IRS will then investigate, and if the information results in a penalty or payment of back taxes, the informant is eligible for a reward.
The idea of a reward for turning in tax cheaters is not new. However, prior to 2007, the individual had no mechanism to learn more about the government’s recovery or to protest the government’s award as unfair. In other words, in the past, people could share information about tax cheaters, and they might get a check in the mail, but that was it.
This is due, in part, to IRC section 6103. As someone new to tax practice, I was not aware of the power of IRC Code Section 6103, which places stringent protection on the sharing of taxpayer information. It makes sense to have such provisions, but I was surprised at how open the qui tam process seems in comparison.
Whitlock made no apologies for this. In fact, to drive the point home, he said “The IRS Whistleblower process is not only a one-way street [with regards to the sharing of information], it is a very narrow one-way street.”
The IRS is the one place in the world where “bureaucracy” is not a bad word–there is layer upon layer of protection for the taxpayer. I was pleasantly surprised that, although the IRS investigative process is a closed one, the IRS does make most of its internal process memoranda available on its website.
The IRS Whistleblower law is not a true qui tam provision. Why? Because the individual has no authority to prosecute a claim on behalf of the United States–they only have the potential to get a reward for sharing the information.
William C. “Bill” Mims Formally Becomes Virginia’s 45th Attorney General
As anticipated, today Virginia’s General Assembly elected former Chief Deputy Attorney General William C. Mims as Virginia’s 45th Attorney General. You can read the official OAG press release here.
This followed in the wake of former Attorney General Bob McDonnell’s announced resignation several weeks ago. Again, as readers of this blog are aware, McDonnell’s resignation has been anticipated for some time, as he is the early favorite to become Virginia’s next Governor.
In my opinion, McDonnell has been by far the best Virginia Attorney General in a generation. Mims is a fine fellow as well, and he will do just fine until we get a new AG in a few months (actually, 11 months). However, lets all hope that this will be the final installation in the OAG’s three year term tradition.
Some might ask why that is important–after all, the OAG has been seen as nothing more than a stepping stone to the Governor’s mansion for the last 36 years, why should we change now?
A handful of recent press releases from General McDonnell show why the next Attorney General of Virginia absolutely must make real changes to that office, and why Virginians can no longer afford to have a three-year Attorney General.
On February 19, 2009, the OAG announced a grant of $30,116 to a public interest group helping to benefit seniors, as well as a $1 million grant to the Virginia Health Care Foundation to provide mental health services in the Commonwealth.
This announcement comes on the heels of millions of dollars in other grants announced over the last several months by the OAG. Some might reasonably wonder where this money is coming from, given that our Commonwealth is in a budget crisis the likes of which we have not seen in many years.
The answer is simple. The money is coming from the proceeds of qui tam cases prosecuted under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act and the Federal False Claims Act. As the press releases explain, this money in particular has come from the prosecution of health care claims under our state statute, which creates liability for anyone submitting false or fraudulent claims to the Commonwealth for payment, and provides for treble damages, civil penalties, and attorney’s fees against any person or company breaking the law.
Under Bob McDonnell’s tenure, the OAG recovered more than $700 million from dishonest companies and individuals in the health care industry. They range in statute from Fortune 50 companies to individuals, but they all have one thing in common–they saw money for the taking, and they took it. And don’t think that is all of it, people. That $700 million is just a portion of the money stolen from us.
So there are two questions we should ask. First, if all this money is being stolen from Medicaid, is that the only state program from which dishonest companies and individuals are stealing? The answer to that question is NO.
Folks, a wide variety of unsavory characters make an enormous amount of money by ripping off the Commonwealth. The same thing is true on the federal level of course, with one major difference–the United States Department of Justice actively prosecutes civil claims on behalf of the United States, and has done so for 146 years.
On the other hand, Bob McDonnell, and his first-class Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) are the first in Virginia history to actively pursue recovering some of our Virginia tax dollars–and they only went after the health care related fraud, because that is what the MFCU is for.
So, there is a second question citizens of the Commonwealth should be asking our new General Mims at this point–in Virginia, could we get even more money back if we actively pursued fraud against the Commonwealth in areas other than health care?
The answer is yes. It is a qualified yes, however, because in order to police the rest of Virginia’s budget the same way McDonnell and the MFCU have policed our use of Medicaid funds, it will take an Attorney General with vision and conviction. It will take an Attorney General who understands exactly what the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act is for–or at least, one who will put people who understand the statute in the right places in the new Administration.
In Virginia, we should be proud of our minimalist government and our low tax burden. But we should also recognize that our government could do much, much more with our tax money if only the right AG would step forward.
And it will take the creation of a first-class affirmative civil enforcement unit within the OAG. But that is another story for a different day.
News from the Race for Virginia Attorney General
Last night the three Republican candidates for Attorney General met in Roanoke for the second debate of this primary season.
I followed the live blog feed, and even from the vantage point of someone reading the debates as blogged by someone else, it was apparent to me that all three candidates have honed their presentations and have focused on the best arguments for their candidacies such that all three are now stronger candidates than they were two months ago at the first debates.
The single most important revelation of the night was this–all three men pledged to spend at least two terms in office (provided, of course, that the good people of Virginia will return them to office in 2013). Regular readers of this blog know that I have continually harped on the phenomenon of the one-term AG, which has been a tradition in Virginia for at least the last 36 years.
I have pointed out that groups like NAMFCU (National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units) and NAAG (National Association of Attorney Generals) who study issues related to the 50 state AG positions all agree that single term AGs are less effective than multiple term AGs. States with a tradition of one-term AGs fall prey to a host of ills that do not plague states with long-serving AGs.
(You don’t have to read a dry academic study to see this concept on a general scale–one of the chief reasons we have term limits on Virginia Governors is that the Virginia House of Delegates, which wields most of the power in Virginia government, likes to keep the Governor right where they want him. A two-term Governor would, without question, be more powerful than a one-termer).
The bottom line is this–state government, like government at every level, has grown more and more complex and more and more demanding to administer. State AGs have a number of very pressing demands that did not exist just four or five years ago. The position of AG is no longer a sleeper office, and it is no longer the kind of office that can see rotating AGs every four years–at least not if the Commonwealth is going to have the kind of government it deserves.
The obligations of our state AGs will undoubtedly grow in the coming four years. With the Obama Administration preparing to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into state economies, fighting fraud in our state budget is going to be an increasingly important part of the state AGs job. The very history of the federal False Claims Act and the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act confirm that whenever there is a government rush to spend money, fraud on government coffers will increase exponentially.
So, while I do not pretend that this blog can take credit for interjecting this major point into the Attorney General debates–because that credit belongs to John Brownlee, who first made the pledge to change the tradition of the one-term AG–I feel strongly that Virginia will better off in the long run as a result of the other two candidates stepping forward and matching Brownlee’s promise to end this tradition.
This will also give whoever gets the nomination a strong practical point against Democrat Steve Shannon, who wears his ambition to be Governor very openly. I think any one of the three men competing for the Republican nomination will give Shannon a real fight in a general election–and I also think any of the three men in the running for the Republican nomination have a very important distinction from Shannon, but that is another story for another day.
Now, here is my read on the AG’s race overall. I think it is clear, after last night, that John Brownlee has become the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Without a doubt, John Brownlee has the strongest legal background and has always been the most qualified candidate for the job, but those things alone do not make him the front-runner.
Brownlee has pulled away from the pack and is now the front-runner because he is now setting the terms of the debate. The issue of the one-term AG is just one example. In a number of other ways, Brownlee is now setting the terms of the debate and that, ladies and gentlemen, is where any politician wants to be.
In any strategic, competitive endeavor–whether it is war, football, complex litigation, or a political campaign–the winner may seem like the one who wins the most battles, or scores the most touchdowns, but in reality those things are just a corollary to winning. The simple truth is that you win by controlling the momentum of the contest. If you control the momentum, scoring points, or winning battles, or getting votes, simply falls into place. You have to begin a football game assuming the other side is going to score–but you absolutely have to have some control over when, where, why, and how they score.
This is not by accident, of course–Brownlee has the deepest reservoir of legal knowledge, has the most experience running a large office of litigators, and the most experience with the sort of issues our state AG will face in the coming years. It is thus only natural that he would dictate the terms of the debates, and set the standards for the others to follow.
Maryland False Claims Act Alert: Maryland Needs a Real False Claims Act!
With so many developments in the Virginia Office of the Attorney General and in the Attorney General race, I let some Maryland developments slip by the goalie.
Specifically, Three of the top five state False Claims recoveries would not have been possible if California had had a health-only statute, and California would have been $249 million poorer.
Additionally, as will be covered in more detail in a later post, Sen. Grassley and Rep. Berman are making serious efforts on the federal level to ensure that states without an FCA style statute to protect their money will feel the pain when the final stimulus bill is passed.