Sleep Clinic Whistleblower Reaps Big Award

Medicare Pays Whistleblower Over $500K

A former technician at a Bay Area sleep clinic recently received a large award from Medicare for information that her prior employer broke the law. Specifically, the whistleblower’s information to Medicare and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that the clinic violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims to the Medicare program for diagnostics and medical devices. Medicare, and the DOJ, take the crime of false Medicare billing extremely seriously and the whistleblower’s information led to a large-scale investigation of the clinic’s billing practice.

The investigation confirmed the whistleblower’s story. The clinic and a host of affiliated organizations hired non-qualified staff to oversee sleep studies, offered sleep-disorder products and sleep testing at non-approved locations, engaged in self-dealing, allowed non-licensed staff to prescribe medical devices, and paid big kickbacks for referrals. In other words, there was multiple Medicare fraud being perpetrated. The whistleblower’s original information also revealed that the parent organization (the one with the deep pockets) knew all about the fraud.

Ultimately, the DOJ entered into a $2.6 million settlement with the organizations. The whistleblower received 21% of that amount as an award for her information. The case took a while – five years in all. But the end result was well worth it. Justice was done, the law was applied, Medicare fraud uprooted, and the whistleblower rewarded for her efforts. The Bay Area case proves the wisdom of whistleblower laws: the government needs citizen help untangling complicated fraud schemes and penalizing wrongdoers. And the citizen may be rewarded for the help.

Contact Us

If you have information regarding Medicare or tax fraud and are looking to be a whistleblower in San Francisco County or in any California county, contact the Evans Law Firm whistleblower/qui tam attorneys at (415) 441-8669, or by email at info@evanslaw.com. Our attorneys have experience with complex qui tam or whistleblower cases, complex financial contract cases and cases against large insurance companies. We can help guide your case through a jury trial or toward an equitable settlement. We handle cases involving physical and financial elder abuse, nursing home abuse, whole life insurance and universal life insurance, and indexed, variable, and fixed annuities.