DOJ's FCA Data-Miner Focus Raises Compliance Stakes

This article was originally published by Law360 and is available here and as a PDF here.

A recent initiative from the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division is designed to allow the division to prioritize the most promising False Claims Act qui tam actions brought by data miner whistleblowers.¹

Announced April 30 against the backdrop of last year's record-shattering number of qui tam actions filed, according to the DOJ, the department's Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics, or FOCUS, initiative signals the DOJ's growing need to separate the stronger cases from the weaker ones.

The Initiative

The FOCUS initiative operates within the broader framework of the False Claims Act, one of the government's most potent tools for combating fraud.