In recent years, elected and appointed members of the federal government and others have estimated that seven percent—or as much as 15 percent or 20 percent—of federal spending is consumed by fraud. With the federal government spending $3.8 trillion a year, even seven percent lost to fraud equates to a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. That’s more than $800 per American, per year lost to fraud. As the government spends more and more each year, the False Claims Act and the qui tam whistleblowers it incentivizes become more and more important. In fact, the Justice Department is recovering record amounts under the False Claims Act—$5 billion alone last year. But as the scale of these recoveries demonstrates, there is still a lot of fraud left every year for whistleblowers to uncover and report.
John Sinatra is a partner in the Business Litigation Practice at Hodgson Russ LLP. You can reach him at jsinatra@hodgsonruss.com.