On February 6, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced a $37,000,000 civil money penalty against Brink’s Global Services USA, Inc. (Brink’s) for willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the main U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) law that protects the financial system from illegal behavior. [...]
Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Credit Card Giants Drain Billions: Can Congress Take Action? GV Wire – February 4, 2025 Few Americans know that they spend on average $1,100 a year to pay for credit card transaction fees. In addition, U.S. retailers pay $170 billion annually to process credit card transactions, [...]
On January 31, 2025, the government announced an update in a case involving a Phoenix, Arizona couple pleading guilty to causing the submission of over $1.2 billion of fraudulent claims to Medicare and other health insurance programs. The couple submitted claims for costly, medically unnecessary wound grafts applied to elderly [...]
On January 28, the government announced that California resident Lourdes Navarro, 66, was sentenced to nine years in prison for her involvement in submitting fraudulent claims to both government and private insurance companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Navarro and her co-conspirator, Imran Shams, illegally bundled COVID-19 screening tests with expensive [...]
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) bars paying foreign officials for any kind of business advantage, such as securing government contracts or other kinds of favorable business treatment. The statute covers any form of consideration including gifts, meals, travel, and entertainment. It also imposes strict record-keeping and internal control requirements [...]
On January 24, Reuters reported that a whistleblower filed a complaint with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit, or FinCEN, alleging Visa and Mastercard had failed to stop payment networks from laundering money from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the porn-centric creator platform, OnlyFans. According [...]
From our recent survey of top SEC fraud recoveries this past year, we found it was not an especially standout year for the securities regulator in terms of big-dollar hauls. It was not necessarily a banner year for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) either in terms of its fraud [...]
We don’t often like to pick favorites, but when the moment strikes, we glance back at the previous year’s news to reflect. This January, as we unveiled our series of Top-10 lists, we reviewed 2024’s robust archive of Whistleblower Insider Blog posts to revisit a wide range of compelling topics, [...]
Last Friday (January 24), the Department of Justice announced that Pfizer Inc. subsidiary Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company agreed to pay roughly $60 million to settle DOJ and whistleblower charges of violating the False Claims Act and Anti-Kickback Statute by paying kickbacks to induce prescriptions of Biohaven’s migraine medication Nurtec ODT. [...]
Last week (January 22), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Acting Chair Caroline Pham announced a slew of leadership changes at the commodities regulator. Key among them was elevating current head of the CFTC Whistleblower Office Brian Young to Acting Director of the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement. It is a big [...]
