Category: WHISTLEBLOWERS
Reflections on National Whistleblower Appreciation Day
With Covid-19, we are in a new time and a new space for celebrating the role of whistleblowers in our communities, our nation and our world. We have often heard that whistleblowers are critical for preventing the waste, fraud and abuse that limit the effectiveness of government agencies and take money out of taxpayer’s pockets …
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FRAUD AND COVID-19 – Calling Out the Best and Worst of Us
“There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.” — Benjamin Franklin Crises like those we are experiencing now with Covid-19 call out the best of us – we see individuals providing care regardless of risk to self, communities reaching out to …
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Covid-19 Creates Opportunity to Rethink Virus-Monitoring Strategies
The worldwide spread of Covid-19 coronavirus presents an opportunity to rethink the way respiratory viruses are monitored in order to better understand how they spread, epidemiologist and Cochrane researcher Dr. Tom Jefferson writes in a new blog post for the BMJ journal. Dr. Jefferson is an internationally respected epidemiologist who is the Relator in a …
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Can the Government Direct a Whistleblower to Secretly Record Conversations with a Fraudster Represented by an Attorney?
The public-private partnership envisioned by the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA) is one of its most successful and powerful aspects, yielding billions of dollars in recoveries. The FCA permits the Government, the whistleblower, and their attorneys to cooperate—and they often do—when investigating and litigating FCA claims. But are there limits to …
First Circuit Issues Important Decision Clarifying the False Claims Act’s “Original Source” Standard
One of the first and most frequent arguments defendants make in fighting qui tam allegations under the False Claims Act (FCA) is that the case brought by the whistleblower, or “relator,” is not viable because it is based on publicly available information, the relator is not an “original source” of that information, or both. On …
Clayton Halunen featured on inaugural season of the Whistleblower Revolution podcast
Heidi Weber talks in-depth with Clayton Halunen, founder of Halunen Law, in Season One, Episode Two of her podcast, the Whistleblower Revolution. They cover whistleblower laws, protections available to whistleblowers, steps to take when blowing the whistle, and what goes into bringing a case to trial. This podcast is a welcome reunion for Weber and …
What Happens to an FCA Whistleblower’s Reward If the Government Files Criminal Charges against the Defendant?
As a whistleblower, or “relator,” under the False Claims Act (FCA), you have filed a complaint against a company that defrauded the federal government. The government investigated your allegations and indicted the defendant company on federal criminal charges. At sentencing, the government seeks restitution of the amount it lost due to the defendant company’s fraud. …
Whistleblowers in the Intelligence Community
There are many different statutes that provide protections to whistleblowers, and in some instances, also provide specific procedures to follow. That is the case with the federal whistleblower in the news these days. That whistleblower works in the Intelligence Community, where blowing the whistle may involve classified information. The intelligence community defines whistleblowing as “the …
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Celebrating National Whistleblower Appreciation Day
On this National Whistleblower Day, Halunen Law recognizes the tremendous contribution that whistleblowers make to our everyday lives— protecting our health, safety, and taxes. These contributions have been happening since the earliest days of the United States. The Founding Fathers unanimously supported whistleblowers in both words and deeds, including providing government records and monetary assistance …
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Disgruntled Employees? You Bet. Whistleblowers in the United States
A few years back, a news article reported that a meeting of corporate defense attorneys had called out whistleblowers as primarily “disgruntled employees.” This remark reflects a too-common perspective that whistleblowers are a nuisance rather than a contributor to the well-being of our businesses and our government. Far from being a nuisance, whistleblowers are champions …
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