You may be surprised at how often credit reports contain errors. Your credit report can have a significant impact on your life. Mistakes on your credit report can prevent you from getting a mortgage, a car loan, a credit card, or financial assistance when you need it. Some types of credit report errors are seen [...]
For investors seeking quick—and virtually unrestricted—cash without having to sell their investments, securities-backed lines of credit (“SBLOC”) have emerged as an exceedingly popular option. The SBLOC concept is simple. For monthly interest-only payments, brokerage firms extend to investors a revolving line of credit that is collateralized against assets in the investors’ portfolios. With SBLOCs, investors [...]
The Oklahoma Medicaid False Claims Act (“Oklahoma Medicaid FCA”) provides severe penalties for individuals who submit false claims to SoonerCare (Oklahoma’s Medicaid program). It also provides powerful incentives and protections for private individuals with knowledge of Medicaid fraud to pursue claims on the State’s behalf. The Oklahoma Legislature adopted the Oklahoma Medicaid FCA in [...]
The Public Disclosure Bar in False Claims Act Cases A provision of the False Claims Act commonly referred to as the Public Disclosure Bar stops relators from pursuing actions on behalf of the government if the “transactions and allegations” of fraud have been publicly disclosed through various sources listed in the statute. 31 U.S.C. [...]
On August 5, 2019, the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois issued a rare ruling granting partial summary judgment for plaintiff-relators in a False Claims Act case. United States ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu, Inc. et al., No. 11-3290, 2019 WL 3558483 (C.D.Ill. Aug. 5, 2019). Relying heavily on the [...]
If one reads between the lines of a May 7, 2019 opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (covering Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi), it appears that the court comes to the seemingly unremarkable conclusion that Medicare would not intentionally pay for hospice care for patients who are dead: “Relators claimed [...]
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA” or “the Act”) (15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, et seq.) is a 1977 federal statute passed to enhance financial transparency among American companies. The FCPA was passed in response to investigations conducted by the Security and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in the early 1970’s that found bribery directed towards foreign [...]
In U.S. ex rel. CIMZNHCA v. UCB, Inc., 2019 WL 1598109 (S.D. Ill. Apr. 15, 2019), the court denied the Government’s motion to dismiss a facially valid case alleging illegal kickbacks. The relator is a limited liability holding company of an entity called the National Health Care Analysis Group, which is an entity formed [...]
The Department of Justice, with the Office of the United States Attorney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, recently joined a lawsuit filed by private whistleblowers against Mallinckrodt ARD LLC, a drug manufacturer. The Government’s complaint was filed on June 4, 2019, although the case had initially been filed in 2012. The case alleges [...]
In U.S. ex rel. Bibby v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 369 F. Supp. 3d 1346 (N.D. Ga. 2019), the district court that had handled the False Claims Act (“FCA”) litigation for the last seven years of its thirteen-year history rejected the Government’s attempt to limit relators to the minimum statutory share and instead awarded [...]
