Between 1995 and 2003, Saint Barnabas Hospital inflated its costs for patient care to the Medicare programs defrauding the US government out of $265 million. The judge awarded this whistleblower 23% of the total settlement, encouraging other individuals who witness or even perhaps at one time participated in the defrauding the government to come forward and assistin correcting the wrong. This was not an isolated incident at the Barnabas hospitals but had occurred consistently across 9 hospitals in their system. This settlement demonstrates the motivations of numerous governmental agencies to work with people in the system to bring this cases to trial and persecute wrong doers. This case was brought to court in accordance with the False Claims Act, established by President Lincoln back in 1865.
It is believed that billions of dollars of fraud occur ever day of the year but goes on unreported, not because individuals are unaware; but instead because people are in fear of what this case represents as a risk to their careers, their reputations and their families. Additional detail on the case can be found at the Department of Justice's website: