Whistleblower News From the Inside -- April 9, 2018

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

Whistleblowers are vital to democracy. We need to better protect them – Two years ago, we published the Panama Papers. The internal data from the dubious Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed how dictators, drug cartels, mafia clans, fraudsters, weapons dealers and regimes like North Korea and Iran use offshore shell companies to hide their shady business transactions. The publication of investigations based on the papers brought down prime ministers in Iceland and Pakistan, triggered mass demonstrations and launched criminal trials around the world. Laws have changed and oversight committees have been adopted in numerous countries. The Panama Papers have helped tax authorities recover several hundred million dollars in unpaid taxes and penalties. All this began with just one individual and his courage: A whistleblower who called himself (or herself, we still don’t know) “John Doe.” He anonymously leaked 2.6 terabytes of data to us. (We try not to think about what the drug dealers, dictators and organized crime figures would do to John Doe, if they could find him.) His life, his job and his family are still at risk because he saw corruption and decided to try to remedy it. LA Times

 Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: Data could have come from more than 87 million users, be stored in Russia – Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie says the data the firm gathered from Facebook could have come from more than 87 million users and could be stored in Russia. The number of Facebook users whose personal information was accessed by Cambridge Analytica “could be higher, absolutely,” than the 87 million users acknowledged by Facebook, Wylie told NBC’s Chuck Todd during a “Meet the Press” segment Sunday. Wylie added that his lawyer has been contacted by US authorities, including congressional investigators and the Department of Justice, and says he plans to cooperate with them. “We’re just setting out dates that I can actually go and sit down and meet with the authorities,” he said. CNN

 Medical Device Cos. Deny FCA Suit’s Excess Blood-Test Claim – Six medical device companies specializing in at-home blood testing on Friday blasted a False Claims Act suit in Massachusetts federal court, saying the government and its relator have failed to show that the companies’ mandatory weekly tests excessively billed Medicaid and Medicare. Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Roche Health Solutions Inc., US Healthcare Supply LLC, Patient Home Monitoring Inc., Advanced Cardio Services and Cardiolink Corp. each filed court documents on Friday denying having manipulated doctors and patients into gratuitous use of equipment that checks blood viscosity in people who take blood thinners long-term. Law360