The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that fiscal 2019 recoveries from False Claims Act (FCA) settlements and judgments exceeded $3 billion, with healthcare and procurement fraud as the largest areas of recovery. That brings total recoveries under the FCA since 1986 to more than $62 billion. Recoveries were up from the more than $2.8 billion reported in 2018, and recoveries from cases initiated by qui tam relators remained roughly steady from 2018 to 2019 at over $2.1 billion.
The DOJ press release also highlighted the role of FCA “whistleblowers,” known as qui tam relators. In 2019, relators filed 633 lawsuits (an average of 12 per week). And qui tam suits, both intervened and declined, accounted for the lion’s share of FCA recoveries – roughly $2.1 billion, or 70%. That percentage is consistent with past years with the exception of 2017, where relator-initiated lawsuits resulted in 92% of recoveries. In 2019, relators were awarded $265 million in FCA bounties.
DOJ’s press release emphasized that, consistent with its focus on individual accountability, the government sought to make corporate owners and executives jointly and severally liable for violations in a number of FCA cases in 2019 and also pursued other civil remedies against individuals.
DOJ’s release demonstrates that enforcement, mostly driven by qui tam filings, remains robust.
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