In Their Own Words - Frosh
Posted 02/6/15
Whistleblower Group
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Whistleblower News From The Inside - February 6, 2015
Posted 02/6/15
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Maryland AG urges adoption of False Claims Act -- Calling it a powerful tool to prevent fraud and abuse in state and local government, Attorney General Brian E. Frosh unveiled his top priority for the 2015 legislative session and urged the General Assembly to adopt the Maryland False Claims Act. Maryland Attorney General
Medtronic Inc. agrees to pay $2.8 M to resolve...
DOJ Catch Of The Week -- Standard And Poor's Financial Services
Posted 02/6/15
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
This week's Department of Justice "catch of the week" goes to Standard & Poor's Financial Services (S&P). On Tuesday, the ratings giant, along with its parent corporation McGraw Hill Financial Inc., agreed to pay $1.375 billion to settle charges it schemed to defraud investors in structured financial products known as Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) and...
February 6, 2015
Minnesota-based medical device manufacturer Medtronic Inc. agreed to pay $2.8M to resolve allegations it violated the False Claims Act by causing physicians to submit false claims to federal health care programs for investigational medical procedures known as “SubQ stimulations” that were not reimbursable. According to the government, Medtronic improperly promoted the procedure and the use of its spinal cord stimulation devices for the procedure even though its safety and efficacy had not been established by the FDA. The charges were first raised in a whistleblower lawsuit filed under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act by former Medtronic sales representative Jason Nickell. He will receive a whistleblower award of $602,000. DOJFebruary 5, 2105
A group of Utah-based defendants led by Philip J. Danielson and his company, Danielson Law Group, settled FTC charges that they broke the law by conning consumers into paying hefty fees for worthless mortgage relief services. The five proposed orders settling the FTC’s charges ban the defendants from offering mortgage assistance relief services and from participating in the debt relief industry. According to the FTC, defendants lured consumers into paying $500 to $3,900 by falsely promising that attorneys would negotiate loan modifications that would substantially reduce the consumers’ mortgage payments. The complaint also alleged that the defendants used the name Danielson Law Group and other attorney or law firm names to look like they had lawyers all over the country, even though many consumers never met or spoke to an attorney. FTC2014 Whistleblower Of The Year Goes To… Mary Willingham!
Posted 02/5/15
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
The votes are in -- Mary Willingham is Whistleblower Insider’s 2014 Whistleblower of the Year! Ms. Willingham is the former educator at the University of North Carolina who went public with her concerns about the university’s major failings in educating its big money athletes and has been on a continued quest to clean up college sports. We recently shined the...
February 5, 2015
The CFTC ordered Isaiah Goldman and Brock Catronio, individually, and their companies, Paramount Metals Exchange, LLC and Paramount Credit, LLC, both of Delray Beach, Florida, to pay over $2.5 million in sanctions for engaging in illegal, off-exchange precious metals transactions. CFTCFourth Circuit Joins Other Circuits In Narrow Read of Public Disclosure Bar
Posted 02/5/15
Under the False Claims Act, a whistleblower may be precluded from filing a qui tam lawsuit based on information that has already been publicly disclosed by another source. This so-called "public disclosure bar" is designed to weed out "parasitic" actions from those brought by whistleblowers with true inside knowledge of fraud. There has been some disagreement among the courts as to how "public" a disclosure must...
Feds Green-Light Institute’s New Patent Policy For Wi-Fi Standards, Finding It Potentially Procompetitive
Posted 02/5/15
The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday that it would not challenge recent revisions to the Patent Policy of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (“IEEE-SA”)—giving the green light to new Wi-Fi standards that computers, smartphones and tablets will follow in connecting to the Internet.
The Antitrust Division’s decision removes one...