Qui Tam

Wall Street Financial Industry "Bailout" Whistleblowers Sought by--Michael Moore?

By Finch McCranie, Esq.

Taking a brief break from "substantive" writing on this whistleblower lawyer blog, I could not help but briefly note this story today:

Filmmaker Michael Moore is seeking whistleblowers in the financial industry for his next film. He concludes "if you work for a bank, a brokerage firm or an insurance company -- or if you have seen things or heard things that you believe the American people have a right to know -- please contact me" via the email address posted on his blog.

Perhaps those whistleblowers should follow Sen. Grassley's strong advice to use the qui tam whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act to report fraud and abuse in TARP or other "bailout" measures. Persons in the financial services industry already have contacted us to do just that, and some also have potential claims in the IRS Whistleblower Program.

Both the False Claims Act and the IRS Whistleblower law allow the private citizen whistleblowers to share in the government's recovery of money wrongfully obtained, as we have written about extensively.

We anticipate that the "stimulus" package in Congress this week also will produce many opportunities for fraud and abuse of taxpayer funds, so that whistleblowers also will be important to deter those abuses through use of the False Claims Act and the IRS Whistleblower Program.

Full post as published by Whistleblower Lawyer Blog on February 11, 2009 (boomark / email).