Amanda Wu was a senior quality control analyst at Alere Inc, a medical supply company, prior to filing a qui tam FCA lawsuit against her employer in 2011. In March 2018, Wu was awarded $5.8 million as a reward for her efforts in bringing to light Alere’s fraudulent practices of selling unreliable medical diagnostic equipment, after the Department of Justice (DOJ) recovered $33.2 million in a settlement with Abbott Laboratories, the company that later acquired Alere.
Wu’s multi-million dollar payday is testament to the benefits that employees of companies committing fraudulent activities can receive in bringing forward violations of the False Claims Act committed by their employers.
Alere’s Faulty Devices Caused False Medicaid Invoices to Be Submitted
In announcing the settlement, the DOJ alleged that Alere has knowingly sold, “materially unreliable point-of-care diagnostic testing devices.” Specifically, the DOJ alleged that, between 2006 and 2012, Alere had sold to hospitals point-of-care testing devices under the Triage name which were supposed to aid in the diagnosis of acute coronary syndromes, heart failure, drug overdose, and other serious conditions.
The Triage products were unreliable, however, and numerous customer complaints put the company on notice that the “devices it sold produced erroneous results that had the potential to create false positives and false negatives that adversely affected clinical decision-making.”
As a result, hospitals that used the devices submitted false invoices to Medicaid based on treatments that appeared necessary based on the false readings produced by the devices. Despite the complaints, the company did not take appropriate actions to remedy the problem until a nationwide recall occurred in 2012.
The Power of an Employee to Fight Fraud While Winning Big
As stated above, Amanda Wu was a senior quality control analyst at Alere who became aware of the faulty devices and the fraud that was being committed on taxpayers through continued use and sale of the Triage products.
Wu’s $5.6 whistleblower award is approximately 20% of the entire $33.2 million that the federal government recovered in the FCA settlement, which is in line with the typical whistleblower award of 15% to 25% of total recovery in an FCA claim.
The case demonstrates that anyone with inside information of false claims being submitted to the government has the power to bring an FCA claim and potentially win a large reward, including non-executive employees of a corporate wrongdoer.
Work With a Whistleblower Attorney to Bring an FCA Claim
At Kreindler & Associates, our experienced government fraud attorneys will work with you every step of the way to determine your appropriate course of action, protect you from retaliation, and collect your much-deserved reward. If you suspect that someone is committing fraud against the U.S. government, contact us today for an evaluation of your allegations to determine whether you may be eligible for an FCA whistleblower award.
