DOJ Targets Funders as Eleventh Cir. Upholds Whistleblower Win

A $255 million Medicare fraud award will stand after the Eleventh Circuit refused Thursday to reconsider a panel’s decision greenlighting a successful whistleblower’s outside funding agreement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit wasn’t swayed by the skilled nursing facility defendants’ assertion in a petition for rehearing that the False Claims Act expressly disallows third parties from receiving assigned fraud claims pursued in the U.S. government’s name.

The panel’s June 25 decision is the “first and only” by a federal court to give a whistleblower “the unlimited right to secretly reassign the government’s claims to any ...