In Conte v. Kingston NH Operations LLC, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21686, *1, 2022 WL 356753, a New York District court granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss an employee’s false claims allegations under the False Claims Act (the “FCA”) and the New York False Claims Act (the “NYFCA”). The case stemmed from allegedly improper patient
Corporate & Commercial
DOJ and SEC Kick Off the Second Quarter with Major FCPA Settlement with International Waste Management Company
On April 20, 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) separately announced that Stericycle Inc. (Stericycle), an international waste management company headquartered in Lake Forest, Illinois, has agreed to pay more than $84 million to resolve parallel investigations by authorities in the United States and Brazil. The investigation is…
FERC’s New Infrastructure and Environmental Impacts Priority – What to Expect in Enforcement Cases
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Office of Enforcement (OE) has historically focused on four “priorities,” as described in its annual Report on Enforcement. Those four priorities included (1) fraud and market manipulation; (2) serious violations of Reliability Standards; (3) anticompetitive conduct; and (4) conduct that threatens the transparency of regulated markets. In the 2021…
New Revelations in Ukraine Lead to Tightening Global Sanctions
RELATED UPDATE:
FinCEN Alert Highlights Potential U.S. Commercial Real Estate Investments by Sanctioned Russian Elites and Their Proxies (January 30, 2023)
As the world watched in horror over the atrocities occurring in the war zones of Ukraine this week, global leaders re-doubled their efforts to bring increasing sanctions pressure to bear on Russian industry, the…
Enforcers Eye Crypto Tax Dodgers, Their Accountants and Lawyers
As tax season approaches, cryptocurrency investors and their advisors are facing heightened scrutiny. The New York State Office of the Attorney General recently announced its commitment to hold “cryptocurrency tax cheats accountable.” Taxpayers who fail to properly declare their crypto income could face treble damages, interest, and penalties under the New York False Claims Act,…
FDIC Consumer Compliance Supervisory Highlights for State and Community Banks
On March 31, 2022, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued the March 2022 edition of its Consumer Compliance Supervisory Highlights. The publication provides a high-level overview of consumer compliance issues identified in 2021 through the FDIC’s supervision of state-chartered banks and thrifts that are not members of the Federal Reserve System. It provides…
DOJ Publishes FCPA Declination on Cross-Border Bribery Investigation
Without fanfare, DOJ recently published a “declination and disgorgement letter,” the first FCPA declination published by the Department since August 2020.…
District Court finds that AKS Violations are Per Se Material
Last month, the Central District of California granted the government’s affirmative motion for partial summary judgment in U.S. v. Reliance Medical Sys., 2022 WL 524062 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 2, 2022). The Reliance Medical case involved an FCA action based on a theory that certain physician-owned distributorships (PODs) violated the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS). As detailed below,…
Largest-Ever Small-Business Contracting Fraud Settlement Related to Pass-Through Subcontracting
Federal contractors should take note of a $48.5 million False Claims Act settlement between the Department of Justice and TriMark USA LLC — the largest-ever FCA settlement based on allegations of small-business set-aside contracting fraud. DOJ alleged that TriMark had a plan to circumvent specific small-business contracting requirements by providing significant assistance to three small…
Eye Care Practice Settles with Government for Employing Excluded Individual
On March 18, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Connecticut Attorney General announced that a Connecticut eye care practice and its owners had agreed to pay $192,699 to resolve allegations that the practice improperly employed an individual who was excluded by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) from…