The New York Court of Appeals handed the state’s Attorney General a big victory in 2015 in a case involving tax fraud under the state’s False Claims Act. New York’s highest court ruled that the Attorney General may proceed with a lawsuit against Sprint for knowingly defying a state tax law that requires telecom companies to collect sales tax on the entirety of flat-rate contracts with its mobile customers. The lawsuit alleges that Sprint initially complied with the law, which was enacted in … [Read more...]
What Justice Scalia’s Death Means for the False Claims Act
With Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on February 13, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court will continue to hear and decide cases with only eight justices. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has said that the Senate will neither hold hearings nor vote on a replacement for Justice Scalia until after President Obama leaves office on January 20, 2017. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have echoed McConnell’s position. The Supreme Court can function with only eight justices. As … [Read more...]
Switch to ICD-10 Not A Cure-All For Healthcare Fraud
The World Health Organization is the public health arm of the United Nations. Since 1948, WHO has been responsible for updating the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), a worldwide system for collecting, processing, classifying and processing statistics about diseases. The most recent version of the ICD is ICD-10, or tenth edition, which WHO published in 1999. The U.S. Center for National Health Statistics adapts the ICD to create the ICD-CM, which is used by U.S.-based healthcare … [Read more...]
Feds take strong action to protect whistleblowers from overzealous confidentiality agreements
Many companies require their employees to sign confidentiality agreements that prohibit the employees from disclosing non-public information about the company to outsiders. In general, these confidentiality agreements aim to protect a company’s proprietary information that gives it an advantage over its competitors; things like trade secrets, inventions, customer lists and strategic plans. Recently, however, a growing number of companies have included language in their confidentiality … [Read more...]
SEC Compliance Office to Focus on Exchange-Traded Funds in 2016
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations recently announced its priorities for 2016. The OCIE conducts examinations of the securities industry with the goal of improving the integrity of the capital and securities markets. The OCIE focuses on improving compliance, preventing fraud, monitoring risk and advising the full Commission on policy. One of the OCIE’s priorities for 2016 is to closely examine exchange-traded funds, known as ETFs. An ETF … [Read more...]