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Whistleblower News From The Inside - November 30, 2017

Posted  November 30, 2017

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

Lawyer Admits Trying to Sell Secret U.S. Whistleblower Lawsuits – A former partner at a major law firm in Washington pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges that he tried to sell copies of sealed whistleblower lawsuits against corporations that he obtained while working at the U.S. Justice Department. Jeffrey Wertkin, 41, was working at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP when he was arrested in January trying to sell an undercover federal agent one of the lawsuits while wearing a wig as a disguise, according to court papers. He pleaded guilty in San Francisco federal court to charges of obstruction of justice and interstate transportation of stolen goods, court records show. Sentencing is scheduled for March. Reuters

Doping Whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov Urges Russia to come Clean – He’s the eccentric doctor immortalized in the Netflix documentary Icarus, the whistleblower who exposed what a leading report called a doping “cover-up that operated on an unprecedented scale” in Russia. Now Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov is urging Russia to “do the right thing” and admit it.Russia has consistently denied the claims of Rodchenkov — the former head of Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory — which formed the basis of the 2016 McLaren Report’s conclusions that more than 1,000 athletes benefited from a systematic doping program between 2011 and 2015. The Russian ministry for sport continues to reject the report’s findings, though an International Olympic Committee (IOC) panel has, this week, banned a further eight Russian athletes over cheating at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, taking the total number to 22. CNN

Pharmacies Abused Federal Workers’ Comp, FCA Suit Says – The U.S. federal government filed a False Claims Act suit in Texas federal court Wednesday alleging two pharmacies and their effective owners paid a chiropractor kickbacks to refer them prescriptions that the government would then reimburse under the federal workers’ compensation program. The government said the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs reimbursed the pharmacies Haney & Haney LLC and Family Pharmacy Inc. $3.5 million for prescriptions for patients covered by the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act, which compensates government employees for job-related injuries. “The object of the agreement…was to enrich themselves by maximizing the number and value of the FECA prescriptions that would be presented to and paid for by DOL-OWCP,” the complaint said. Law360