Statistics can be a funny thing. Sometimes they can be manipulated to tell two different stories. Other times it’s hard to tell the real story behind them. Let’s take this statistic:
The U.S. Department of Justice has paid nearly $4 billion in rewards to whistleblowers who reported fraud against the government.
That’s right, the government has paid whistleblowers $4 billion as in $4,000,000,000.00.
This blog shares the backstory and how can you do something today to help curb fraud against the government.
DOJ likely will pay $500 million more in rewards next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, because it found that the only way to curb fraud against the government is to pay huge whistleblowers rewards. That’s because 10% of all government spending is lost to fraud. When the government spends $3 trillion a year that adds up annually to $300 billion of fraud. To try to wrap you mind around this consider that it means you, me, and everyone else must pay $1,500 a year more in taxes than you should just to cover the amounts lost to fraud.
Here’s how paying rewards for reporting fraud against the government makes not only sense, but dollars and cents. For every dollar a whistleblower helps recover, the whistleblower gets about 20%. For instance, if you report $10 million in Medicare fraud committed by the hospital you work for, you get a reward of $2 million. Here’s what the Government gets in return. In the last 15 years this reward program has brought the government $25 billion, which is a net of $21 billion after paying $4 billion in rewards. That is a 400% return on investment. I can’t think of a more efficient part of the government than this!
The reason such large awards are needed is because earlier attempts at a reward program with low whistleblower rewards failed miserably. When the Department of Justice was finally tired of the military being charged $800 for toilet seats, the reward program was improved in 1986 and began paying big rewards. The results speak for themselves. Paying $4 billion to get $21 billion make sense. After all, it’s hard to get a whistleblower to risk losing a job or being retaliated against unless there is a payday of about 20% of what the government collects.
Here are a few more statistics about the reward program for reporting fraud against the government.
• The average whistleblower reward is $1 million.
• The largest rewards in a case have topped $100 million.
• One day we will see a reward of $1 billion dollars!
• Whistleblowers claiming rewards are now responsible for reporting about 70% of all new cases of fraud against the government.
With over $300 billion a year in fraudulent payments, there are plenty of opportunities for you or someone you knows to be eligible for a million dollar whistleblower reward for reporting fraud. The reward programs applies to reporting fraud against any federal agency or program, including the military, Medicare, Homeland Security, Postal Services, and twenty other agencies. Most of the States have now jumped on board and have their own whistleblower reward programs. Even the IRS adopted its own whistleblower reward program.
We may not like some of these statistics, but curbing fraud against the government should be on everyone’s agenda. With one out of ten companies cheating the government, it’s time to get involved. If you’re not in a position to detect and report fraud, sharing this blog with others might be the one thing you can do to do your part. If 100% of people knew of this reward program, companies would be too afraid to keep cheating the government. Now that’s a statistic we can get excited about! Right now, share this blog with your friends.