Government Program Fraud, False Claims Act & Qui Tam Litigation Playbook

On February 7, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) released its annual False Claims Act (“FCA”) recovery statistics and announced that it had obtained more than $2.2 billion in settlements and judgments in fiscal year 2022 from civil cases involving fraud and false claims against the government.[1] The significant decrease in 2022 recoveries stands in stark contrast with DOJ’s near-record breaking fiscal year 2021 where it obtained more than $5.6 billion in settlements and judgments. That said, fiscal year 2022 marked the fourteenth straight year where recoveries exceeded $2 billion.

As we reflect on the past in order to prepare for the future, it becomes increasingly clear that 2021 will bring greater use of one of the government’s most powerful civil enforcement tools—the False Claims Act (“FCA”)—to root out fraud and abuse involving government funds in a myriad of industries and in novel ways.