New York Whistleblower And Commercial Litigation Blog

"Improper financial arrangements between government officials and private contractors corrupt taxpayer-funded contracts," says the acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Civil Division.

A former financial administrator for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has just agreed to settle allegations that he violated the federal Anti-Kickback Act. The Act prohibits offering or exchanging anything of value in an effort to induce or reward referrals of federal healthcare contracts or program business. The man, who worked in Texas, has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle the allegations. In 2014, he pled guilty to a felony charge of failing to disclose payments he had received, which was his obligation under federal employment rules.

One basic principle of the American free market system is that workers have the opportunity for advancement. If that opportunity does not come at your current job, a competitor might see your experience and hire you at a better salary. It is a cornerstone of the economy and something that most people take for granted.

A noncompete clause in an employment contract controls where an employee might work next. Simply put, when an employee signs, he or she agrees not to share trade secrets with the competition. It is done to protect the business and the intellectual property it owns. A recent trend in noncompetes does not just consider trade secrets, but work experience in a much broader sense.

In 2013, cyclist Lance Armstrong admitted to using banned substances to win his record seven Tour de France titles between 1999 and 2005. In 2012, an investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency found that Armstrong and a number of his teammates had used the substances. Unfortunately, Armstrong was representing the U.S. Postal Service during six of his victorious tours, and that led a teammate to blow the whistle under the federal False Claims Act, claiming that Armstrong's doping was a fraud on the government.

Armstrong has just agreed to settle the fraud allegations for $5 million. The extent of the harm suffered by the Postal Service was a looming issue in the case. Armstrong and his team received $32.3 million in sponsorship money from the USPS, and the agency had once said the sponsorship had been a marketing boon. Armstrong's attorneys had planned to argue that the USPS suffered no harm from the doping.

The Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act may not be completely up to speed, but three former Takata employees will still get their awards. They blew the whistle on the auto parts manufacturer in the largest recall in automotive history. The recall involves faulty air bag inflators installed by 19 automakers into millions of vehicles.

The Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act was passed in 2015. It offers an award to auto industry employees who blow the whistle on vehicle safety violations. The award these whistleblowers can obtain is between 10 and 30 percent of any monetary sanction over $1 million that the government obtains based on their information.