The Department of Justice has announced that defense contractor ATK Launch Systems Inc., based in Arlington, VA, has agreed to pay $36,967,160 to settle a False Claims Act qui tam lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah by a whistleblower employee, ATK flare program manager Kendall Dye.

According the lawsuit, ATK knowingly delivered defective illuminating para-flares from 2000 to 2006 to the Defense Department. These flares were used extensively by the Air Force and Army in Iraq and Afghanistan for nighttime combat, and covert search and rescue operations.  Because flares burn at temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit for over five minutes, the government requires that they withstand a 10-foot drop test without exploding or igniting; ATK’s flares failed to meet this requirement.  In 2005, Dye learned that ATK had been aware since 2000 that its flares did not meet government standards, but the company continued submitting claims for payment.

David B. Barlow, U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah, states:

“This settlement demonstrates our commitment to aggressively go after contractors who recklessly disregard and deliberately ignore critical safety defects in munitions used by America’s uniformed fighting men and women on the front lines of the war on terror.”

As part of the settlement, ATK will pay the U.S. government $21 million in cash, and provide necessary services worth $15,967,160 in order to fix the remaining 76,000 unsafe para-flares.

The Employment Law Group® law firm is a leader in the field of whistleblower law and has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice representing employees who have exposed illegal activity by their employer.

On April 16 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Cablexpress Corp, which operates under the name CXtec, agreed to pay $2 million to settle allegations that it violated the Trade Agreements Act (TAA). The lawsuit claims that CXtec unlawfully sold to the federal government counterfeit gigabit interface converters (GBICs) as well as networking and voice communication equipment  that were manufactured in countries prohibited by the TAA .

Timothy Kuney, a former high-ranking employee at CXtec, brought the law suit under qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA). The FCA allows a private citizen with knowledge of an organization committing fraud against the government to file a lawsuit against the organization on behalf of the government in order to recover fraudulently obtained federal funds.

Kuney filed the complaint in 2008 with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, claiming that CXtec  knowingly violated the TAA by selling products that were manufactured in China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, to federal agencies. The contract between CXtrec and the government required that all products be compliant with TAA. According to the complaint, CXtrec also established a specialized operation to sort, test and repackage counterfeit GBICs in order to deceive the government that they were authentic products.

Kuney will receive an award of $380,000 as a result of the settlement. The $2 million settlement resolves some claims in the complaint, but not all. The lawsuit will continue to move forward on additional allegations that CXtec sold to the government other products that violated the TAA .

“We are gratified that the government’s attorneys and investigators aggressively pursued our client’s allegations with respect to the unlawful sale of cables and counterfeit GBICs in violation of the False Claims Act, and we intend to continue our investigation and litigation of the remaining qui tam claims in the case,” said Jonathan Tycko, one of Kuney’s attorneys.

The Employment Law Group® law firm is a leader in the field of whistleblower law and has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice representing employees who have exposed illegal activity by their employer.

On April 3, 2012, U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill announced that WellCare Health Plans, Inc.

agreed to settle four lawsuits alleging violations of the federal False Claims Act (FCA).  WellCare is a Tampa, Florida-based company that provides managed health care services for 2.6 million Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries nationwide.  In all four law suits, whistleblowers filed suit under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) intervened, investigated, and negotiated the settlements of the suits.

The lawsuits alleged that WellCare inflated the amount it claimed to spend on medical care to avoid returning money to Medicaid, and it retained overpayments it received from the Florida Health Kids program. In addition, the DOJ claimed that WellCare falsified data to misrepresent the medical conditions of patients and the treatments they received, abused the market by “cherry picking” healthy patients to avoid higher costs, manipulated performance metrics at its call center, and operated a sham Special Investigations Unit.

The settlement resolves these allegations and more and requires that Wellcare pay the U.S. and nine states — Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New York and Ohio — a total of $137.5 million plus interest over three years. In the event that the company is sold or undergoes a change in control, WellCare may be required to pay $35 million in contingency
fees.

“In an era of decreasing federal and state budgets, and increasing healthcare costs, we must pursue all available civil remedies to recover losses suffered by government healthcare programs. This settlement should serve as notice to those defrauding state and federal healthcare programs that, in addition to appropriate criminal prosecutions, we will utilize civil suits to root out their conduct and recover their ill-gotten gains,” said U.S. Attorney O’Neill.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice representing employees who have been victims of retaliation.

R. Scott Oswald, managing principal of The Employment Law Group® recently published an article in The Washington Post discussing new expansions of employee rights in the areas of whistleblower protection and wage and hour law.

In the piece, Mr. Oswald discussed recent developments in employee protection law that, if ignored, could result in penalties and other sanctions for employers, including: the miscategorization of workers as independent contractors; expansions in the protection afforded by whistleblower laws; and new wage and overtime protection for home healthcare workers.

On the subject of employee misclassification, Mr. Oswald wrote that:

 “in this tough economy, employers may be tempted to miscategorize an employee as an independent contractor in order to skirt requirements to pay unemployment insurance, Social Security, workers compensation and other employee benefits.”

However, employers could face stiff penalties for misclassifying workers, according to Oswald.  Specifically, in Maryland, employers found to be in violation of the law can be liable to pay both restitution to the misclassified worker and a $1,000 civil penalty.  Other states’ protections provide even more protection to employees, for example, according to a recently enacted law in California, employers can be subject to a fine of up to $15,000 for each violation and even up to $20,000 if the employer is found to have engaged in a “pattern or practice of these violations”.

Mr. Oswald also discussed new federal protections for whistleblowers under the Dodd-Frank Act which “has created a national whistleblower standard that applies not only to employees at publicly traded corporations but also to corporations that are regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).”  Among the industries now affected by the new whistleblower protections include, according to Oswald, “payday lenders, private education lenders, and mortgage finance companies.”

Also highlighted in the article were recent regulatory changes by the Department of Labor which will assist in “reigning in wage abuses in certain industries not traditionally covered by protections, including the home healthcare industry.”   As a result, more home healthcare workers will soon be protected by federal minimum wage and overtime laws, whereas currently there are nearly 30 states that do not offer such workers minimum wage or overtime protections.

As a result of these new laws and regulations, Mr. Oswald commented that “employers must be more careful in how they pay their workers and must be more rigorous in their human resources compliance.”

The Employment Law Group® law firm has a nationwide whistleblower practice representing employees who have been the victims of retaliation, as well as and extensive wage and hour practice representing employees whose rights have been violated, including nonpayment of wages and denial of overtime pay.

Hawthorn Pharmaceuticals Inc., a subsidiary of Cypress Pharmaceutical Inc., has agreed to pay the federal government and eleven states $2.8 million to settle a qui tam lawsuit filed in 2007 under seal in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Robert Heiden, who worked for Hawthorn in Florida from October 2005 to October 2006 as a district sales manager, filed a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act alleging that between 2003 and 2009 Hawthorn and its CEO, Max Draughn, illegally marketed three prescription drugs that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as eligible for reimbursement by Medicaid and other government healthcare programs. Heiden also alleged that he was terminated for refusing to offer “illegal inducements to pharmacies and pharmacists.”

Heiden states:

“My case and the government’s response mean that children, from infants to adolescents, now are protected from the dangers of certain drugs whose safety and effectiveness haven’t been determined. With the removal of the drugs from government reimbursement lists, doctors are shielded from prescribing drugs they had been misled to believe were FDA-approved, and parents will no longer be giving their children drugs they didn’t realize hadn’t been approved by the FDA.”

As a whistleblower under the False Claims Act, Heiden will receive 21 percent of the settlement for the information he provided.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice  representing employees who have been victims of retaliation.

On March 13, 2012, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay the government $45 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged that the financial giant hid illegal fees in veteran’s home mortgage refinancing transactions and sought to collect on void government loan guarantees.  Two whistleblowers filed a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Acts in 2006 in U.S. district court in Atlanta, Georgia.

The whistleblowers, Victor Bibby and Brian Donnelly, worked as mortgage brokers for a Georgia-based mortgage brokerage firm, U.S. Financial Services Inc.  In 2005, the pair began noticing that mortgage lenders were charging veterans hidden fees on home loans refinanced under the government’s Interest Rate Reduction Refinancing Loans program.

The whistleblowers reported becoming suspicious after the lenders allegedly instructed them not to show clients a fee the companies were charging for attorneys’ fees on loan documents, but rather to include that fee as a “title examination fee”. After being ignored by the mortgage lenders, Bibby and Donnelly filed a qui tam lawsuit, which remained under seal until recently in order to allow the government time to investigate the claims.

As a result of the settlement Bibby and Donnelly are slated to receive 26% of the settlement amount, or $11.7 million.

The lawsuit sought to recover money not only from JP Morgan Chase, but also from seven other banks and mortgage companies including CitiMortgage, Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank, PNC Bank, and Washington Mutual Bank. JPMorgan Chase is the first to settle the claims, while the lawsuit against the other financial institutions is still pending.

“Our lawsuit alleges that these lenders committed blatant fraud,” said co-lead counsel for JP Morgan Chase, Marlan Wilbanks.  “Although JPMorgan Chase has paid to settle its claims, we are looking forward to moving the case against the other defendant lenders.  These banks should be held accountable for causing the government to pay millions of dollars on void loan guarantees.”

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice  representing employees who have been victims of retaliation.

On March 8, 2012, the Washington State Legislature passed legislation creating a Medicaid fraud false claims act with strong bipartisan support.  If signed into law, the bill (SB 5978/HB 2571) would give the state a new means of pursuing Medicaid fraud and would allow individual citizens – qui tam relators – to bring whistleblower lawsuits for Medicaid fraud on behalf of the government, as long as the individuals are the original source of the information.

Similar to the federal False Claims Act (FCA), the newly passed legislation in Washington would allow qui tam whistleblowers to receive awards based on the amount of funds recovered through lawsuits and settlements.   The bill would empower the Washington Attorney General’s office to bring such cases on behalf of the government.

Specifically, whistleblowers who report fraud will be able to receive 15% to 25% amount recovered if the attorney general intervenes and proceeds with the case, and awards of 25% to 30% if the attorney general does not proceed and the relator conducts the lawsuit alone.  Additionally, the law would create civil penalties for fraud ranging from $5,500 to $11,000 per claim, as well as treble damages.

The legislation contains several provisions that distinguish it from the federal FCA, most notably the lack of a statute of limitations, which could allow claims that extend farther back in time than current federal laws permit.

According to one of the main sponsors of the legislation, Sen. Cheryl Pflug (R), “without this tough enhancement of our False Claims Act, our state [would be] powerless against the corporate culprits who defraud taxpayers through false Medicaid claims.”

Washington governor Christine Gregoire (D) is expected to sign the legislation.  If signed, Washington would join 29 other states that have enacted similar laws.

The Employment Law Group® law firm focuses in the areas of employment law and whistleblower protection law, has helped many clients file suit against employers that fraudulently billed the U.S. government, and has established favorable precedents under the retaliation provision of the False Claims Act.

The Employment Law Group® law firm’s managing principal, R. Scott Oswald, has published an article in The Rocket Docket News, entitled “Blowing the Whistle in 2012: New Developments in Qui Tam Litigation”. The article focuses on recent developments in the field of qui tam litigation including:

• Recent interpretations of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA) which hold that no proof of specific intent to defraud is necessary to establish False Claims Act (FCA) liability.
• How the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) amends both the FCA and the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) by providing that claims submitted in violation of the AKS automatically constitute per se false claims under the FCA and that an individual “need not have actual knowledge or specific intent to commit a violation of the AKS.”
• The implication that prosecutors need not rely on the implied false certification theory when litigating claims of AKS violations as such violations are now per se false claims under PPACA.
• The continuing relevance of the implied false certification for all other types of FCA claims.
• The effect of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Schindler Elevator Corp. v. U.S. ex rel. Kirk on the public disclosure bar in qui tam suits.

The Rocket Docket News is the newsletter of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. Mr. Oswald’s article appears in the publication’s Winter 2012 edition.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice representing employees who have been victims of retaliation.

Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero approved a settlement in which Citigroup Inc., the nation’s third-largest bank, agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle claims that it defrauded the federal government by misleading the government into insuring high-risk home mortgages.

The settlement  resolves a lawsuit against Citigroup brought by a whistleblower under the federal False Claims Act. The whistleblower, Ms. Sherry Hunt, a quality control manager at Citibank, is entitled to collect $31 million of the settlement amount for her role in exposing the fraudulent conduct.

According to the lawsuit, Citigroup falsely certified that many of its mortgage loans qualified for insurance under the FHA program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Among Hunt’s allegations was the claim that Citibank employees erased the records of approximately 1,000 loans that a Citibank quality-control team had designated as potentially fraudulent. In violation of HUD requirements, these defects that the quality control identified were not included in reports to the government.

According to government investigators, 30% of the HUD-insured mortgaged made or underwritten by Citibank since 2004 have gone into default, resulting in a nearly $200 million loss to the government. In its complaint against Citibank, the government noted that “a substantial percentage of those claims resulted from loans that were ineligible for FHA insurance and never should have been insured.”

As part of the settlement agreement, CitiMortgage, a subsidiary of Citibank “admits, acknowledges and accepts responsibility” for having misled the government into insuring high-risk home mortgages.

Since the False Claims Act was amended in 1986, more than $34 billion of fraud against the government has been recovered.  According to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, the $158.3 million settlement is the second-largest amount ever paid in a mortgage fraud case.

The whistleblower, Ms. Hunt, is still employed by Citigroup and is now a vice president of quality assurance.  Commenting on her role as a whistleblower, Ms. Hunt said:

 “I had to do something to stop them . . . I felt that if I were brave enough to come forward and take a stand, then maybe others would, too.”

The Employment Law Group® law firm focuses on the area of whistleblower protection law, and has helped many clients come forward to file suit against employers that fraudulently billed the U.S. government and has helped whistleblowers protect their careers.

Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the federal agencies succeeded in recovering $4.1 billion in fraudulent healthcare payments in 2011.  This figure – detailed in the annual Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC) report – is a record high, with recovered funds having increased nearly 50% since 2009.

According to the report, between 2009 and 2011 the federal government collected $7.20 for every $1.00 spent on fighting fraud. This is an increase from the period between 1997 and 2008 in which the government recovered $5.10 for every dollar spent on countering fraud.

Officials attributed the rise in recoveries to increased efforts to screen healthcare providers by conducting site visits to ensure that healthcare providers deemed to be moderate fraud risks have a legitimate office before these providers can be enrolled to participate in Medicare and Medicaid. Additionally, those providers considered to be higher risks are now subject to criminal background checks.

According to the report, approximately $2.4 billion of the recovered funds were recovered by cases brought under the False Claims Act (FCA).  The FCA allows individual citizens to bring charges in the name of the U.S. government against parties who fraudulently receive government funds. The qui tam provision of the FCA allows individuals who bring such lawsuits to receive 15 to 30% of the total amount funds recovered.

Among the common types of fraudulent health care claims, the HCFAC report details:

“unlawful pricing by pharmaceutical manufacturers, illegal marketing of medical devices and pharmaceutical products for uses not approved by the FDA, Medicare fraud by hospitals and other institutional providers, and violations of laws against self-referrals and kickbacks.”

The nearly $2.4 billion recovered under the FCA in 2011 marks the second consecutive year in which the government has recovered more than $2 billion in FCA claims. Since the beginning of 2009, HHS has recovered in excess of $6.6 billion in federal health care spending under the FCA. It is estimated that there is $60 billion to $90 billion in Medicare fraud every year.

According to Attorney General Eric Holder, such fraudulent practices “harm all of us – government agencies and programs, insurers and health care providers, and individual patients.”

The Employment Law Group® law firm focuses in the areas of employment law and whistleblower protection law, has helped many clients file suit against employers that fraudulently billed the U.S. government, and has established favorable precedents under the retaliation provision of the False Claims Act.

R. Scott Oswald, managing principal of The Employment Law Group® law firm will serve as a panelist in an upcoming presentation to the Northern Virginia Chapter of the Federal Bar Association on March 7, 2012.

The topic of the Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar is “Blowing the Whistle in 2012: New Developments in Qui Tam Litigation” and will focus on a discussion of recent developments in qui tam litigation including:

• New law on the false certification theory;
• The first-to-file bar;
• The public disclosure bar;
• Other elements and defenses for False Claims Act (FCA) cases in the Eastern District of Virginia

The seminar will include both relators’ counsel and defense attorneys who will discuss FCA liability following amendments and regulatory changes in recent years.  In addition, the talk will include a discussion on practical considerations in qui tam relator suits including:

• What relators’ attorneys consider in choosing potential claims;
• The factors used by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in deciding whether to intervene;
• Litigation of FCA retaliation claims along with pending relator lawsuits

The seminar is being held in at the Westin in Alexandria, VA from 12:00-2:30pm.  Registration will remain open until February 29, 2012.  The Northern VA Chapter of the Federal Bar Association is offering a discount on registration fees to government attorneys to encourage participation

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice representing employees who have been victims of retaliation.

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On January 5, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a two-year statute of limitations was the appropriate period for assessing the timeliness of an action brought by a private employee alleging retaliation by a former employer in violation of the False Claims Act (FCA).

The plaintiff, Michael Riddle, allegefs that after he complained to his supervisors at Dyncorp International, Inc. that the company had not fulfilled its obligations to finish a contracting project with the U.S. government, he was “marginalized” and “eventually terminated” on September 21, 2009.  Riddle then filed suit against Dyncorp on March 18, 2010 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleging that his employer had violated the FCA when he purportedly sought to prevent the company from making a fraudulent claim for payment to the government.

When Riddle filed suit, the FCA contained no relevant limitations period. In the absence of an express statute of limitations, courts have generally used analogous state statutes of limitations to determine the timeliness of a FCA action.  The district court dismissed Riddle’s suit, holding that the most analogous statute to the FCA is the Texas Whistleblower Act (TWA) which has a 90-day statute of limitations.

The Fifth Circuit reversed the lower court’s dismissal, disagreeing with the district court and finding that the analogy between the FCA and the TWA was “lacking”.  The appeals court noted that the TWA only provides a cause of action to public employees and Mr. Riddle alleged retaliation by a private employer.  In addition to restricting its retaliation protection only to public employees, the court noted that the TWA was also not analogous to the FCA because the TWA requires public employees first “to pursue an administrative remedy before suing”.  This results in TWA limitations periods often exceeding 90 days because the running of the limitations period is suspended while the required administrative proceedings are pending.

In its decision, the Fifth Circuit held that the most analogous Texas state statute for determining the FCA statute of limitations is the two-year period applied to personal injury cases.  The court favored this analogy “because of its association with…a cause of action for wrongful discharge where a person is terminated for refusing to commit an illegal act”. In reversing the district court’s ruling, the court remanded the case for further proceedings.

The appeals court also declined to apply the new three-year statute of limitations for FCA retaliation cases created by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act because newly-created statute of limitations under Dodd-Frank was not yet in effect when the plaintiff filed his complaint.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice  representing employees who have been victims of retaliation.

Last week, the U.S. government filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to reopen a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit against Pfizer Inc. that alleged the drug manufacturer paid kickbacks to physicians who prescribed its drug Genotropin.

The case, U.S. ex rel. Peter Rost v. Pfizer Inc., began in 2003 when relator Peter Rost, a former Pfizer vice president, alleged that the company and its affiliate Pharmacia Corp. engaged in practices involving kickbacks that led to pharmacies submitting false Medicaid claims for Pfizer’s drug Genotropin and that Pfizer induced pharmacies to prescribe the drug for off-label uses. The suit was unsealed in 2005 after the U.S. government opted not to intervene in the case.

In 2010, Judge Patti Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the alleged kickbacks did not constitute a cause of action under the FCA. The ruling, which was based on a theory of implied certification, held that the Medicaid claims that innocent third-party pharmacies submitted were not considered fraudulent within the meaning of the FCA even if Pfizer had violated the Anti-Kickback Statute. The judge also found the companies had not engaged in any illegal off-label marketing of Genotropin.

The government noted that it filed the amicus brief because of its interest in ensuring that the FCA would be used in qui tam lawsuits involving kickback claims. According to the brief:

“an entity that knowingly causes the submission of kickback-tainted claims to Medicare or Medicaid cannot avoid liability under the FCA simply because such claims are submitted by ‘innocent’ third parties…who have no knowledge of the underlying kickbacks.”

In urging the First Circuit to revive the case, the amicus brief also indicates that the First Circuit recently reopened similar qui tam cases against Amgen Inc. and Blackstone Medical Inc. that alleged kickbacks.

Mr. Rost’s attorney recently told reporters that he thinks that the government believes that it is “important to try to prevent the pharmaceutical industry from using these kickbacks to try to taint the judgment of doctors.”

The Employment Law Group© law firm focuses in the areas of employment law and whistleblower protection law, has helped many clients file suit against employers that fraudulently billed the U.S. government, and has established favorable precedents under the retaliation provision of the False Claims Act.

On December 29, 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that GE Healthcare Inc. agreed to pay thirty million dollars to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit  in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against Amersham Health Inc., a holding company of  GE Healthcare. The DOJ alleged that from 2000 to 2003, Amersham submitted false claims to Medicare for Myoview, a radiopharmaceutical that allows doctors to observe blood flow in images of patients’ hearts.

According to the DOJ, Amersham also unnecessarily  increased the amount of Myoview in a dose to increase the drug’s sales. GE Healthcare denies any wrongdoing, stating that it acquired Amersham in 2004, after the alleged False Claims Act violations took place.  “It’s important for drug manufacturers to provide accurate pricing information to Medicare so that taxpayers aren’t overcharged for medicines purchased with their dollars,” said Tony West, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, in a statement about the settlement.

James Wagel, a salesman for Cardiolite, a competitor to Myoview,  brought his concerns to the DOJ in 2006 and was awarded $5.1 million from the total settlement.  Wagel claimed that many of his clients purchased Myvoview over Cardiolite because they were able to get more use out of the product.  When doctors used Myoview in testing, however, results showed false problems with patients’ hearts and led to unnecessary and expensive testing.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide whistleblower practice  representing employees who have been victims of retaliation.

The U.S. Department of Justice last week announced that it filed a complaint in a whistleblower lawsuit against AseraCare Hospice, a for-profit organization with 65 hospice providers in 19 states. The complaint alleges that AseraCare violated the False Claims Act when it knowingly enrolled in hospice care individuals who were not terminally ill with a prognosis of six months or less left to live.  AseraCare fraudulently collected millions of dollars in Medicare payments by enrolling patients who were ineligible for hospice care.

If the Justice Department succeeds in proving that AseraCare knowingly submitted false claims, the federal government could recover from AseraCare three times the amount of the false claims submitted, and $5,500 to $11,000 in penalties for each claim. This lawsuit joins another whistleblower lawsuit originally filed in 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama by former employees, Dawn Richardson and Marsha Brown.   If the Justice Department prevails, Richardson and Brown would be entitled to receive a portion of the money recovered.