Whistleblower News From The Inside -- September 18, 2017
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Former Whistleblower Starts Legal Aid Group to Guide Would-be Tipsters – In a city filled with leakers, congressional committees with subpoena powers and investigative reporters, John N. Tye wants to make it easier to expose government wrongdoing without getting fired or breaking the law. A former State Department whistleblower, Tye and lawyer Mark S. Zaid have formed Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit law office to help would-be tipsters in the government and the military navigate the bureaucratic and legal morass involved in reporting governmental misdeeds. Washington Post
Owner of Nursing Home Where 8 Died Linked to $1B Medicare Fraud Case – Pacific The hospital co-owned by a Florida doctor whose nursing home was the site of eight deaths last week is linked to the biggest Medicare fraud case ever filed against individuals in U.S. history, court records show. Neither Larkin Community Hospital nor its president, Dr. Jack Michel, is named or charged in the criminal fraud case filed last year in Miami federal court. But in 2004, in a civil case also filed in Miami, federal prosecutors cited multiple links among Michel, Larkin and Michel’s former business associate, Philip Esformes, the man prosecutors say is the ringleader of a scheme that used elderly patients to bilk Medicare and Medicaid of about $1 billion. Palm Beach Post
Reno Man Accused of Using Thousands of Accounts for Fraud – A 46-year-old Reno man is accused of stealing identities and using more than 8,000 fraudulent PayPal accounts, bank accounts and other financial accounts to defraud victims of $3.5 million. Kenneth Gilbert Gibson was arrested to face a total of 35 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. The federal indictment issued Tuesday alleges Gibson between 2012 and 2017 used victims’ identities to open unauthorized online accounts, credit accounts, bank accounts, and prepaid debit and credit card accounts to obtain money and property. U.S. News