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K&G Law Group Announces the Fourth Anniversary of Virginia Qui Tam Law.com


Four years ago this month I started blogging here at Virginia Qui Tam Law.com — I’ll resist the urge to say something hackneyed and sentimental about the last four years, or maybe I will reserve that right for the end of the post. 

When I started this blog, I set out some simple goals.  However I neglected to mention my most important goal which was to create the sort of blog I was looking for, covering the kind of topics in which I was interested.  

I couldn’t find what I was looking for so I went ahead and created it. 

I was also hoping to provide education and helpful information about the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (and the federal False Claims Act) with an eye towards generating interest in those topics among the Virginia Bar.  I think I can definitely say that I have had some successes in that regard. 

Let me also say that I am not fooling myself — it is highly probable that all of the VFATA developments that have taken place in the last four years would have taken place with or without this blog.  For example, it was only a matter of time before someone like Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli stepped up to the plate and did what needed to be done to protect the taxpayers of the Commonwealth. 

Whether or not it made a difference I can’t say for sure, but I would like to think it helped. 

In February of 2008, there was little to no interest in the VFATA and few people outside the health care world even knew what it was.  There were only two reasons why health care profession knew about VFATA, and those reasons were in no particular order  (1) the award-winning Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the Office of the Virginia Attorney General and (2) the ground-breaking work of then-United States Attorney John Brownlee in the Western District of Virginia.       

That same month, I worked with the Fairfax County Bar Association to create and host the first every Continuing Legal Education seminar on the VFATA.  A fair number of people showed up, but more importantly that seminar led to a second one in Richmond later that year in the Office of the Attorney General, and just under 100 people showed up.   

I blogged endlessly trying to put the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act on the radar of every candidate for Virginia Attorney General in the 2009 Attorney General primary and then in the general election, and I think we can say that it worked.  

More importantly we can say that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who was elected to that office in November of 2009 (well, really he was elected in May of 2009 when he defeated two formidable candidates at the Republican Convention) has vigorously enforced VFATA cases and has garnered well-deserved accolades from many different corners of the Commonwealth.    

In November of 2008, I settled the first non-healthcare non-intervened case under the VFATA, and it made the front page of Mixx Delicious Digg Facebook Twitter