According to Taxpayers Against Fraud (TAF), federal and state False Claims Act cases recovered over $9 billion in civil and related criminal fines in fiscal year 2012. This noteworthy sum was a record and over twice the $4 billion recovered for FY 2012. To put this amount in perspective, from 1986 through fiscal year 2011, case filed under the federal False Claims Act returned $30 billion in civil recoveries to the public fisc.

The tremendous returns in 2012 were largely the result of 30 False Claims Act settlements, of which 28 were initiated by qui tam or whistleblowers. Once again, the lions’ share of dollars was from qui tam actions filed against dishonest health care companies and providers. Specifically, $6.5 billion, or 71% of total recoveries, were attributed to health care qui tam actions.

The four largest were cases involved the following defendants: GlaxoSmithKline ($3 billion), Abbott Laboratories ($1.5 billion), Bank of America ($1 billion), and Merck ($950 million).

More information for whistleblowers is located at the Nolan Auerbach website.