Whistle Blowers

The new financial reform law has what some lawyers call a secret weapon against fraud on Wall Street and in corporate America: the promise of a million-dollar jackpot to insiders who reveal an illegal scheme to the government. Tucked in the massive bill is a provision that for the first time extends a concept long applied to government contracts to the private sector. It gives whistle-blowers a mandatory 10% — and as much as 30% — of what the government recoups in fines and settlements in financial fraud cases.

WASHINGTON -- The General Services Administration official who was the first to bring attention to excessive spending taking place at a 2010 conference in Las Vegas testified Tuesday to support the government's investigation and subsequent dealings with the agency. Deputy Commissioner Susan Brita told those attending Tuesday's House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing that "I share your anger and disappointment in GSA's conduct. " Brita initially informed Robert Peck, the former commissioner of the Public Buildings Service, of her concerns about the need for the conference, and has since aided in Inspector General Brian Miller's examination of the GSA. Peck was one of two deputies fired from the GSA following the resignation of the agency's administrator, Martha Johnson.

Nice to see that the referees in Arizona were consistent in calling charges against both UCLA and USC, altering both games for the home team, and raising eyebrows about their competency. And it is nice that the NCAA makes it a point that coaches aren't to comment about missed calls, thus burying their mistakes or issuing an apology days later, which does nothing for the players or the team that had the poor call against them. Barry Levy Hawthorne :: I really believe that Pac-10 officiating today is just as dishonest and/or just as incompetent as Big Ten officiating was back in the '50s.

Pharmacy and prescription drug management company CVS Caremark Corp. has agreed to pay nearly $20 million to settle three lawsuits involving allegations that it defrauded pension systems in three states, including California's giant pension fund, attorneys said. The whistle-blower lawsuits, filed by two former CVS Caremark pharmacists, accused the company of reselling returned drugs, changing prescription orders to make them more expensive and submitting false reports about how long it took to fill prescriptions.

It looks like the NBA was able to fine enough players and coaches for complaining about the replacement officials to afford a contract with the regular officials. Sol Bialeck Van Nuys

Reporters don't take promises of confidentiality lightly. A complex story often hinges on tips from insiders. And insiders, fearful of retribution, will sometimes talk to reporters only on the condition that their names not be used. Breaking such a promise can jeopardize the source's job or worse. It also casts a chill over others who may be thinking about blowing the whistle.

Saying a staff psychiatrist was being punished by a "kangaroo court" for exposing horrid, life-threatening conditions at the county's Hillcrest mental hospital, Assemblyman Larry Stirling has introduced legislation to expand protection for so-called government "whistle blowers."

Whistle-blowers have helped authorities recover at least $9.3 billion from healthcare providers accused of defrauding states and the federal government since 1996, according to an analysis of Justice Department records. The department intensified efforts in the 1990s to combat healthcare fraud by using private citizens with inside knowledge of wrongdoing. They now initiate more than 90% of the department's lawsuits focusing on healthcare fraud. Whistle-blowers start cases by filing a sealed complaint in federal court.

Calling whistle-blowers "public servants of the highest order," President Bush signed legislation to give more protection to federal employees who expose waste, fraud and abuse in government. At a ceremony in the auditorium of the Executive Office Building, Bush signed into law the Whistle-blowers Protection Act of 1989, which he said is free of the "constitutional flaws" that led former President Ronald Reagan to pocket veto a similar bill last October. The bill's key features, fundamentally unchanged from the vetoed version, would establish a simpler and fairer standard for whistle-blowers to prove retaliation by their bosses and would give them the right to appeal their cases to the Merit Systems Protection Board if the government's Office of Special Counsel fails to do so.

Last December, a specialty pharmacy in Florida enjoyed its best month ever ? posting a hefty $168.7 million in revenues. But it wasn't filling prescriptions that made Ven-A-Care of the Florida Keys Inc. such a success. Tiny Ven-A-Care has developed a lucrative niche market: blowing the whistle on drug companies that overcharge Medicare and Medicaid ? and collecting tens of millions of dollars in reward money. Unlike most whistle-blowers who help the government with one case after they encounter wrongdoing, Ven-A-Care has filed suits alleging fraudulent conduct against dozens of drug companies supplying pharmacies and healthcare providers.

The ruling African National Congress pushed a secrecy law through Parliament on Tuesday over the objections of Nobel laureates, opposition politicians and editors who complained that it will have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and investigative journalism in a country rife with corruption. Critics said the law, which makes it illegal to reveal state secrets, lacks a provision allowing a legal defense for acting in the public interest by exposing criminality, corruption or incompetence.

David Dutcher met Sharon on Match.com in late 2008, a few months after separating from his wife. "We had a lot in common," he recalled. Sharon loved four-wheel-drive trucks and sports. They met for coffee, then dinner. Sharon was tall, slender, blond and beautiful. She moaned that she had not had sex in a long time. She told him he had large, strong hands and wondered if that portended other things. She described his kisses as "yummy. " "It felt a lot like Christmas," said Dutcher, 49, a tall, burly engineer with wavy red hair.

Dismayed by one City Council member's repeated whistle-blowing about the embattled city, Montebello City Council members are slated Wednesday to discuss rules on how council members communicate and use city letterhead. The move comes after some city officials expressed outrage that Councilwoman Christina Cortez used city letterhead to ask the Los Angeles County district attorney and the state controller to investigate the city. One rule would call for council members to provide for the printed agenda "a brief general description" of what they plan to discuss during public comments, "expressed in complete sentences.

An appeals court has restored a whistle-blower lawsuit that accuses Santa Ana-based Corinthian Colleges of violating federal law by paying bonuses to recruiters based on the number of students they enrolled at the company's for-profit vocational colleges. Federal law prohibits colleges from paying commissions based on the number of students a recruiter enrolls. The requirement is intended to prevent recruiters from signing up poorly qualified students who would eventually drop out and be unwilling or unable to repay federally guaranteed loans.

Walter Tamosaitis, once a top engineer in the nation's nuclear weapons cleanup program, has been relegated to a basement storage room equipped with cardboard-box and plywood furniture with nothing to do for the last year. Tamosaitis' bosses sent him there when he persisted in raising concerns about risks at the Energy Department's project to deal with millions of gallons of radioactive waste near Hanford, Wash., including the potential for hydrogen gas explosions. "Walt is killing us," said Frank Russo, Bechtel Corp.'s top manager at the project, in an email to Tamosaitis' boss urging that the engineer be brought under control.

Reporting from Sacramento The California Public Employees' Retirement System signed a $575 million-a-year contract with CVS Caremark Corp. to provide prescription drug benefits to 346,000 members. The contract, announced Monday, came more than two weeks after Caremark settled a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging fraud in earlier contracts involving CalPERS and pension funds in other states. CalPERS negotiated the new three-year agreement with Caremark after the fund's board canceled negotiations in March with a competitor, Medco Health Solutions Inc. An internal investigation revealed that Medco allegedly had paid more than $4 million in bribes to win an earlier contract in 2006.

Legislative Counsel Bion M. Gregory has suspended two whistle-blowers who refused to be a party to destruction of evidence on the grounds that their actions may have violated traditional lawyer-client relationships. That sounds reasonable but so do the actions of the whistle-blowers. Therefore, in fairness, everyone connected with the destruction of evidence--those who gave the orders, those who passed them along, those who acquiesced, and those who actually destroyed--should also be suspended (including, no doubt, Gregory.

Quest Diagnostics Inc., the biggest provider of medical lab services in California, has agreed to pay $241 million to settle a whistle-blower's lawsuit that accused it of overcharging the state Medi-Cal program. The lawsuit also alleged that the Madison, N.J., company paid illegal kickbacks to doctors, hospitals and clinics that sent patients their way. The settlement was the largest in the history of California's False Claims Act, which allows private citizens to sue on behalf of the state if they have evidence that a government contractor has defrauded a state agency.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System is negotiating a lucrative pharmacy benefits management contract with Caremark Rx Inc., a company being sued for defrauding the pension fund of tens of millions of dollars. It's the second embarrassing misstep by CalPERS in the last month as the scandal-plagued agency seeks a contractor to manage the delivery of mail-order prescription drugs for about 300,000 state and local government workers, retirees and their families. CalPERS is the largest buyer of healthcare benefits after the U.S. government.