Fraud committed by corporations against the federal government is almost as old as the
United States itself.
This is something that's basically been happening since this country was founded and actually
had a functioning government.
Immediately, business owners thought, wow, I can take advantage of that and it's a tradition
that continues to this very day except on a much larger scale.
But there is a remedy, there is a way to stop these corporations from defrauding the federal
government.
And I'm joined now by Scott Hardy from topclassactions.com to tell us what that remedy is.
So Scott, how do we stop corporations from scamming the government?
Who, who's going to do this?
Well, it's, it's the average person that's out there that sees this fraud, which stops
it.
And you know, the nice thing is you don't have to do it just out of the goodness of
your heart.
We want to make sure that we're reporting fraud.
We want to make sure that we're, we're, we're stopping this thing.
But if you find fraud, if you're a nurse in a hospital and you find out that, or your
doctor's office is that sending false Medicare claims or, or, or blowing them out of proportion
and charging too much, you might be able to get 15 to 30% of what that fraud is.
So if there's $1 million in fraud, you can get a 150 to $300,000 in theory.
You know, if it's a big, you know, if you're a military contractor in Afghanistan and you're
a cook and you see that your company is overcharging the federal government millions of dollars
to feed our troops, then hey, that could be a very big payday.
But that's the really interesting thing about these whistleblower and qui tam lawsuits is
that, you know, it's not scientists and doctors that are filing these.
No, it's the average person that is seeing this fraud, this corporate graft and is reporting
it to lawyers like, the attorneys you work with here.
Those are the guys that are going after these corporations and recovering money, not just
for the lawyers, not just for the government, but for the person who actually reported it.
You know, I remember a few years ago, in fact, we did a huge kind of series on it here at
Ring of Fire with Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy Jr, on, on qui tam and whistleblower
cases.
But it began talking about a case that had just been settled by the federal government.
A whistleblower brought it forward and it resulted in more than $300 million against
this company that had been defrauding the government.
So that particular whistleblower got anywhere between 15 and 30% of that $300 million.
And this was just the average employee at that group who happened to stumble upon the
documents or the receipts or whatever it was, and say, wait a minute, we're, we're overcharging
the government here.
We're not doing what we say we are.
This is absolute outright fraud.
And now that person gets to sit on millions upon millions of dollars just because they
did the right thing.
I mean, these are big rewards in most instances for the people willing to come forward.
Now, let's be clear about this though.
There's also a lot of risks and that's one of the reasons whistleblowers are sometimes
reluctant to come forward because if you know, the company finds out, they do retaliate against
employees.
We've discussed that on Ring of Fire plenty of times.
So it is dangerous.
But at the same time, these people who are brave enough to come forward, the government
will do their best to take care of you, to protect you, and to make sure that this fraud
committed by whatever corporation you're, you're, you're dealing with here doesn't happen
again in the future.
And as you pointed out, one of the most common places we see this is hospitals and doctor's
office.
And people may think, well, wait a minute, how are they doing it?
Well, they're doing it through Medicare.
They're doing it through Medicaid.
They're up billing, they're charging for services that they never even performed.
And in some cases we've seen, they're actually saying they've performed all of these tests
on a patient that actually died a while ago.
Just that the government didn't realize that yet.
So they say, oh no, no, no, no.
This person who died last week, we had done a cat scan, we took a bunch of x rays, we
gave them an MRI.
We had to, you know, do all kinds of stuff to them.
So you owe us an extra $20,000 Medicare and it's completely false.
But because people in the hospital system catch this, the government can say, all right,
you're going to pay us back and we're going to hit you pretty hard on this.
Right, exactly.
I mean, everybody from a nurse to a janitor might end up kind of catching on as to where
this fraud might take place.
And this could be anything that has affected the federal government, doesn't have be healthcare.
Could be a military, simply on a military base.
It could be anywhere where somebody is billing the government and they are overcharging the
government and committing fraud.
And yes, there can be retaliation.
But that retaliation is illegal.
And so that's where you have the federal government and the attorneys that work here to work to
protect the whistleblowers.
Make sure that if they're reporting this fraud that they have still have a job and that they
can still get paid as they're going through this investigation process.
And so it is not an easy process, but when you see this fraud, you know, that's, that's
really why they put in this 15 to 30% award is, you know, it's not an easy process.
But if you find that graft, that corporate graft against the federal government, then
you can be rewarded very nicely.
Absolutely and as you said, you know this, this is healthcare.
This is government contractors.
You know, procurement businesses for the federal government, SEC corporate fraud.
You have IRS fraud.
Any of those fall under these qui tam provisions, people are protected.
The whistleblower can be rewarded.
So if you happen to work for a company that you think may have committed any of these
things, or if you have evidence of it, please follow the link in the description of this
video.
Get more information, reach out to attorneys through Top Class Actions, and while you're
there, always sign up for their weekly newsletter.
In my opinion, absolutely one of the best resources available for consumers to arm themselves
with the knowledge to not get scammed by some of the biggest corporations in this country.
Scott Hardy, Top Class Actions.
Thank you very much for talking with us.
You're welcome Farron.
Thank you, sir.