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Fat Man

"Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) was the codename for the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, and one was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.

The name Fat Man refers to the early design of the bomb because it had a wide, round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. The first of that type to be detonated was the Gadget in the Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. Two more were detonated during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946, and some 120 were produced between 1947 and 1949, when it was superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb. The Fat Man was retired in 1950.

Early decisions
Robert Oppenheimer held conferences in Chicago in June 1942, prior to the Army taking over wartime atomic research, and in Berkeley, California, in July, at which various engineers and physicists discussed nuclear bomb design issues. They chose a gun-type design in which two sub-critical masses would be brought together by firing a "bullet" into a "target". Richard C. Tolman suggested an implosion-type nuclear weapon, but the proposal attracted little interest.

The feasibility of a plutonium bomb was questioned in 1942. Wallace Akers, the director of the British "Tube Alloys" project, told James Bryant Conant on 14 November that James Chadwick had "concluded that plutonium might not be a practical fissionable material for weapons because of impurities". Conant consulted Ernest Lawrence and Arthur Compton, who acknowledged that their scientists at Berkeley and Chicago, respectively, knew about the problem, but they could offer no ready solution. Conant informed Manhattan Project director Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr., who in turn assembled a special committee consisting of Lawrence, Compton, Oppenheimer, and McMillan to examine the issue. The committee concluded that any problems could be overcome simply by requiring higher purity.

Oppenheimer reviewed his options in early 1943 and gave priority to the gun-type weapon, but he created the E-5 Group at the Los Alamos Laboratory under Seth Neddermeyer to investigate implosion as a hedge against the threat of pre-detonation. Implosion-type bombs were determined to be significantly more efficient in terms of explosive yield per unit mass of fissile material in the bomb, because compressed fissile materials react more rapidly and therefore more completely. Nonetheless, it was decided that the plutonium gun would receive the bulk of the research effort, since it was the project with the least uncertainty involved. It was assumed that the uranium gun-type bomb could be easily adapted from it.

Naming
The gun-type and implosion-type designs were codenamed "Thin Man" and "Fat Man", respectively. These code names were created by Robert Serber, a former student of Oppenheimer's who worked on the Manhattan Project. He chose them based on their design shapes; the Thin Man was a very long device, and the name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel The Thin Man and series of movies. The Fat Man was round and fat and was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. The Little Boy uranium gun-type design came later and was named only to contrast with the Thin Man. Los Alamos's Thin Man and Fat Man code names were adopted by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). A cover story was devised that Silverplate was about modifying a Pullman car for use by President Franklin Roosevelt (Thin Man) and United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Fat Man) on a secret tour of the United States. Air Forces personnel used the code names over the phone to make it sound as though they were modifying a plane for Roosevelt and Churchill.

Development
Neddermeyer discarded Serber and Tolman's initial concept of implosion as assembling a series of pieces in favor of one in which a hollow sphere was imploded by an explosive shell. He was assisted in this work by Hugh Bradner, Charles Critchfield, and John Streib. L. T. E. Thompson was brought in as a consultant, and discussed the problem with Neddermeyer in June 1943. Thompson was skeptical that an implosion could be made sufficiently symmetric. Oppenheimer arranged for Neddermeyer and Edwin McMillan to visit the National Defense Research Committee's Explosives Research Laboratory near the laboratories of the Bureau of Mines in Bruceton, Pennsylvania (a Pittsburgh suburb), where they spoke to George Kistiakowsky and his team. But Neddermeyer's efforts in July and August at imploding tubes to produce cylinders tended to produce objects that resembled rocks. Neddermeyer was the only person who believed that implosion was practical, and only his enthusiasm kept the project alive.

Oppenheimer brought John von Neumann to Los Alamos in September 1943 to take a fresh look at implosion. After reviewing Neddermeyer's studies, and discussing the matter with Edward Teller, von Neumann suggested the use of high explosives in shaped charges to implode a sphere, which he showed could not only result in a faster assembly of fissile material than was possible with the gun method, but greatly reduce the amount of material required, because of the resulting higher density. The idea that, under such pressures, the plutonium metal itself would be compressed came from Teller, whose knowledge of how dense metals behaved under heavy pressure was influenced by his pre-war theoretical studies of the Earth's core with George Gamow. The prospect of more-efficient nuclear weapons impressed Oppenheimer, Teller, and Hans Bethe, but they decided that an expert on explosives would be required. Kistiakowsky's name was immediately suggested, and Kistiakowsky was brought into the project as a consultant in October 1943.

The implosion project remained a backup until April 1944, when experiments by Emilio G. Segrè and his P-5 Group at Los Alamos on the newly reactor-produced plutonium from the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge and the B Reactor at the Hanford site showed that it contained impurities in the form of the isotope plutonium-240. This has a far higher spontaneous fission rate and radioactivity than plutonium-239. The cyclotron-produced isotopes, on which the original measurements had been made, held much lower traces of plutonium-240. Its inclusion in reactor-bred plutonium appeared unavoidable. This meant that the spontaneous fission rate of the reactor plutonium was so high that it would be highly likely that it would predetonate and blow itself apart during the initial formation of a critical mass. The distance required to accelerate the plutonium to speeds where predetonation would be less likely would need a gun barrel too long for any existing or planned bomber. The only way to use plutonium in a workable bomb was therefore implosion.

The impracticability of a gun-type bomb using plutonium was agreed at a meeting in Los Alamos on 17 July 1944. All gun-type work in the Manhattan Project was re-directed towards the Little Boy, enriched-uranium gun design, and the Los Alamos Laboratory was reorganized, with almost all of the research focused on the problems of implosion for the Fat Man bomb. The idea of using shaped charges as three-dimensional explosive lenses came from James L. Tuck, and was developed by von Neumann. A key component needed for the success of the bomb was for there to be absolute precision in all of the plates moving inward at the same time. To overcome the difficulty of synchronizing multiple detonations, Luis Alvarez and Lawrence Johnston invented exploding-bridgewire detonators to replace the less precise primacord detonation system. Robert Christy is credited with doing the calculations that showed how a solid subcritical sphere of plutonium could be compressed to a critical state, greatly simplifying the task, since earlier efforts had attempted the more-difficult compression of a hollow spherical shell. After Christy's report, the solid-plutonium core weapon was referred to as the "Christy Gadget".

The task of the metallurgists was to determine how to cast plutonium into a sphere. The difficulties became apparent when attempts to measure the density of plutonium gave inconsistent results. At first contamination was believed to be the cause, but it was soon determined that there were multiple allotropes of plutonium. The brittle α phase that exists at room temperature changes to the plastic β phase at higher temperatures. Attention then shifted to the even more malleable δ phase that normally exists in the 300 - 450 C range. It was found that this was stable at room temperature when alloyed with aluminum, but aluminum emits neutrons when bombarded with alpha particles, which would exacerbate the pre-ignition problem. The metallurgists then hit upon a plutonium–gallium alloy, which stabilized the δ phase and could be hot pressed into the desired shape. They found it easier to cast hemispheres than spheres. The core consisted of two hemispheres with a ring with a triangular cross-section between them to keep them aligned and prevent jets forming. As plutonium was found to corrode readily, the sphere was coated with nickel.

The size of the bomb was constrained by the available aircraft, which were investigated for suitability by Norman Foster Ramsey. The only Allied aircraft considered capable of carrying the Fat Man without major modification were the British Avro Lancaster and the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress. At the time, the B-29 represented the epitome of bomber technology with significant advantages in maximum takeoff weight, range, speed, flight ceiling, and survivability. Without the availability of the B-29, dropping the bomb would likely have been impossible. However, this still constrained the bomb to a maximum length of 11 ft, width of 5 ft and weight of 20000 lb. Removing the bomb rails allowed a maximum width of 5.5 ft.

Drop tests began in March 1944, and resulted in modifications to the Silverplate aircraft due to the weight of the bomb. High-speed photographs revealed that the tail fins folded under the pressure, resulting in an erratic descent. Various combinations of stabilizer boxes and fins were tested on the Fat Man shape to eliminate its persistent wobble until an arrangement dubbed a "California Parachute" was approved, a cubical open-rear tail box outer surface with eight radial fins inside of it, four angled at 45 degrees and four perpendicular to the line of fall holding the outer square-fin box to the bomb's rear end. In drop tests in early weeks, the Fat Man missed its target by an average of 1857 ft, but this was halved by June as the bombardiers became more proficient with it.

The early Y-1222 model Fat Man was assembled with some 1,500 bolts. This was superseded by the Y-1291 design in December 1944. This redesign work was substantial, and only the Y-1222 tail design was retained. Later versions included the Y-1560, which had 72 detonators; the Y-1561, which had 32; and the Y-1562, which had 132. There were also the Y-1563 and Y-1564, which were practice bombs with no detonators at all. The final wartime Y-1561 design was assembled with just 90 bolts. On 16 July 1945, a Y-1561 model Fat Man, known as the Gadget, was detonated in a test explosion at a remote site in New Mexico, known as the "Trinity" test. It gave a yield of about 25 kt(TNT). Some minor changes were made to the design as a result of the Trinity test. Philip Morrison recalled that "There were some changes of importance... The fundamental thing was, of course, very much the same."

Interior
The bomb was 128.375 in long and 60.25 in in diameter. It weighed 10265 lb.

Assembly

The plutonium pit was 3.62 in in diameter and contained an "Urchin" modulated neutron initiator that was 0.8 in in diameter. The depleted uranium tamper was an 8.75 in sphere, surrounded by a 0.125 in shell of boron-impregnated plastic. The plastic shell had a 5 in cylindrical hole running through it, like the hole in a cored apple, in order to allow insertion of the pit as late as possible. The missing tamper cylinder containing the pit could be slipped in through a hole in the surrounding 18.5 in aluminum pusher. The pit was warm to the touch, emitting 2.4 W/kg-Pu, about 15 W for the 6.19 kg core.

The explosion symmetrically compressed the plutonium to twice its normal density before the "Urchin" added free neutrons to initiate a fission chain reaction.
 * {{legend|#ffff00 |An exploding-bridgewire detonator simultaneously starts a detonation wave in each of the 32 tapered high-explosive columns (positioned around the explosive material at the face centers of a truncated icosahedron, a geometry popularly known from the pattern of common soccer balls).}}
 * {{legend|#cc6633 |The detonation wave (arrows) is initially convex in the...}}
 * {{legend|#d79563 |...faster explosive (Composition B: 60% RDX, 40% TNT). The wavefronts become concave in the...}}
 * {{legend|#ffcc99 |...slower explosive (Baratol: 70% barium nitrate, 30% TNT). The 32 waves then merge into a single spherical implosive shock-wave which hits the...}}
 * {{legend|#d79563 |...inner charges' faster explosive (Composition B).}}
 * {{legend|#c6c6c6 |The medium-density aluminum "pusher" transfers the imploding shock-wave from the low-density explosive to the high-density uranium, minimizing undesirable turbulence. The shock-wave then compresses the inner components, passing through a...}}
 * {{legend|#0000ff |...boron-plastic shell intended to prevent pre-detonation of the bomb by stray neutrons. The shock-wave reaches the center of the bomb, where the...}}
 * {{legend|#008000 |...beryllium–210Po "Urchin" is crushed, pushing the two metals together and thereby releasing a burst of neutrons into the compressed...}}
 * {{legend|#ff0000 |...pit of the nickel-plated delta-phase alloy of 239Pu–240Pu–gallium (96%–1%–3% by molarity). A fission chain reaction then begins. The tendency of the fissioning pit to blow itself apart prematurely is reduced by the inward momentum of the...}}
 * {{legend|#808080 |...natural-uranium "tamper" (inertial confinement). The tamper also reflects neutrons back into the pit, accelerating the chain reaction. If and when sufficient fast neutrons are produced, the tamper itself undergoes fission, accounting for up to 30% of the weapon's yield.}}

The result was the fission of about 1 kg of the 6.19 kg of plutonium in the pit, i.e. of about 16% of the fissile material present. The detonation released the energy equivalent to the detonation of 21 ktonTNT. About 30% of the yield came from fission of the uranium tamper.

Bomb assembly
The first plutonium core was transported with its polonium-beryllium modulated neutron initiator in the custody of Project Alberta courier Raemer Schreiber in a magnesium field carrying case designed for the purpose by Philip Morrison. Magnesium was chosen because it does not act as a tamper. It left Kirtland Army Air Field on a C-54 transport aircraft of the 509th Composite Group's 320th Troop Carrier Squadron on 26 July and arrived at North Field on Tinian on 28 July. Three Fat Man high-explosive pre-assemblies (designated F31, F32, and F33) were picked up at Kirtland on 28 July by three B-29s: Luke the Spook and Laggin' Dragon from the 509th Composite Group's 393d Bombardment Squadron, and another from the 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit. The cores were transported to North Field, arriving on 2 August, when F31 was partly disassembled in order to check all its components. F33 was expended near Tinian during a final rehearsal on 8 August. F32 presumably would have been used for a third attack or its rehearsal.

On 7 August, the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, Rear Admiral William R. Purnell, Commodore William S. Parsons, Tibbets, General Carl Spaatz and Major General Curtis LeMay met on Guam to discuss what should be done next. Since there was no indication of Japan surrendering, they decided to proceed with their orders and drop another bomb. Parsons said that Project Alberta would have it ready by 11 August, but Tibbets pointed to weather reports indicating poor flying conditions on that day due to a storm and asked if the bomb could be made ready by 9 August. Parsons agreed to try to do so.

Fat Man F31 was assembled on Tinian by Project Alberta personnel, and the physics package was fully assembled and wired. It was placed inside its ellipsoidal aerodynamic bombshell and wheeled out, where it was signed by nearly 60 people, including Purnell, Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, and Parsons. It was then wheeled to the bomb bay of the B-29 Superfortress named Bockscar after the plane's command pilot Captain Frederick C. Bock, who flew The Great Artiste with his crew on the mission. Bockscar was flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney and his crew, with Commander Frederick L. Ashworth from Project Alberta as the weaponeer in charge of the bomb.

Bombing of Nagasaki
Bockscar lifted off at 03:47 on the morning of 9 August 1945, with Kokura as the primary target and Nagasaki the secondary target. The weapon was already armed, but with the green electrical safety plugs still engaged. Ashworth changed them to red after ten minutes so that Sweeney could climb to 17000 ft in order to get above storm clouds. During the pre-flight inspection of Bockscar, the flight engineer notified Sweeney that an inoperative fuel transfer pump made it impossible to use 640 USgal of fuel carried in a reserve tank. This fuel would still have to be carried all the way to Japan and back, consuming still more fuel. Replacing the pump would take hours; moving the Fat Man to another aircraft might take just as long and was dangerous as well, as the bomb was live. Colonel Paul Tibbets and Sweeney therefore elected to have Bockscar continue the mission.

The target for the bomb was the city of Kokura, but it was found to be obscured by clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 B-29s on nearby Yahata the previous day. This covered 70% of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point. Three bomb runs were made over the next 50 minutes, burning fuel and repeatedly exposing the aircraft to the heavy defenses of Yahata, but the bombardier was unable to drop visually. By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese anti-aircraft fire was getting close; Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser was monitoring Japanese communications, and he reported activity on the Japanese fighter direction radio bands.

Sweeney then proceeded to the alternative target of Nagasaki. It was obscured by clouds, as well, and Ashworth ordered Sweeney to make a radar approach. At the last minute, however, bombardier Captain Kermit K. Beahan found a hole in the clouds. The Fat Man was dropped and exploded at 11:02 local time, following a 43-second free-fall, at an altitude of about 1650 ft. There was poor visibility due to cloud cover and the bomb missed its intended detonation point by almost two miles, so the damage was somewhat less extensive than that in Hiroshima.

An estimated 35,000–40,000 people were killed outright by the bombing at Nagasaki. A total of 60,000–80,000 fatalities resulted, including from long-term health effects, the strongest of which was leukemia with an attributable risk of 46% for bomb victims. Others died later from related blast and burn injuries, and hundreds more from radiation illnesses from exposure to the bomb's initial radiation. Most of the direct deaths and injuries were among munitions or industrial workers.

Mitsubishi's industrial production in the city was also severed by the attack; the dockyard would have produced at 80 percent of its full capacity within three to four months, the steelworks would have required a year to get back to substantial production, the electric works would have resumed some production within two months and been back at capacity within six months, and the arms plant would have required 15 months to return to 60 to 70 percent of former capacity. The Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works, which manufactured the Type 91 torpedoes released in the attack on Pearl Harbor, was destroyed in the blast.

Post-war development
After the war, two Y-1561 Fat Man bombs were used in the Operation "Crossroads" nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The first was known as Gilda after Rita Hayworth's character in the 1946 movie Gilda, and it was dropped by the B-29 Dave's Dream; it missed its aim point by 710 yd. The second bomb was nicknamed Helen of Bikini and was placed without its tail fin assembly in a steel caisson made from a submarine's conning tower; it was detonated 90 ft beneath the landing craft USS LSM-60. The two weapons yielded about 23 kt(TNT) each.

The Los Alamos Laboratory and the Army Air Forces had already commenced work on improving the design. The North American B-45 Tornado, Convair XB-46, Martin XB-48, and Boeing B-47 Stratojet bombers had bomb bays sized to carry the Grand Slam, which was much longer but not as wide as the Fat Man. The only American bombers that could carry the Fat Man were the B-29 and the Convair B-36. In November 1945, the Army Air Forces asked Los Alamos for 200 Fat Man bombs, but there were only two sets of plutonium cores and high-explosive assemblies at the time. The Army Air Forces wanted improvements to the design to make it easier to manufacture, assemble, handle, transport, and stockpile. The wartime Project W-47 was continued, and drop tests resumed in January 1946.

The Mark III Mod 0 Fat Man was ordered into production in mid-1946. High explosives were manufactured by the Salt Wells Pilot Plant, which had been established by the Manhattan Project as part of Project Camel, and a new plant was established at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. Mechanical components were made or procured by the Rock Island Arsenal; electrical and mechanical components for about 50 bombs were stockpiled at Kirtland Army Air Field by August 1946, but only nine plutonium cores were available. Production of the Mod 0 ended in December 1948, by which time there were still only 53 cores available. It was replaced by improved versions known as Mods 1 and 2 which contained a number of minor changes, the most important of which was that they did not charge the X-Unit firing system's capacitors until released from the aircraft. The Mod 0s were withdrawn from service between March and July 1949, and by October they had all been rebuilt as Mods 1 and 2. Some 120 Mark III Fat Man units were added to the stockpile between 1947 and 1949, when it was superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb. The Mark III Fat Man was retired in 1950.

A nuclear strike would have been a formidable undertaking in the post-war 1940s due to the limitations of the Mark III Fat Man. The lead-acid batteries which powered the fuzing system remained charged for only 36 hours, after which they needed to be recharged. To do this meant disassembling the bomb, and recharging took 72 hours. The batteries had to be removed in any case after nine days or they corroded. The plutonium core could not be left in for much longer, because its heat damaged the high explosives. Replacing the core also required the bomb to be completely disassembled and reassembled. This required about 40 to 50 men and took between 56 and 72 hours, depending on the skill of the bomb assembly team, and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project had only three teams in June 1948. The only aircraft capable of carrying the bomb were Silverplate B-29s, and the only group equipped with them was the 509th Bombardment Group at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico. They would first have to fly to Sandia Base to collect the bombs, and then to an overseas base from which a strike could be mounted. In March 1948, during the Berlin Blockade, all the assembly teams were in Eniwetok for the Operation Sandstone test, and the military teams were not yet qualified to assemble atomic weapons.

In June 1948, General Omar Bradley, Major General Alfred Gruenther and Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe visited Sandia and Los Alamos to be shown the "special requirements" of atomic weapons. Gruenther asked Brigadier General Kenneth Nichols (hosting): "When are you going to show us the real thing? Surely this laboratory monstrosity is not the only type of atomic bomb we have in stockpile?" Nichols told him that better weapons would soon become available. After the "astonishingly good" results of Operation Sandstone were available, stockpiling of improved weapons began.

The Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon was based closely on Fat Man's design thanks to spies Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and David Greenglass, who provided them with secret information concerning the Manhattan Project and Fat Man. It was detonated on 29 August 1949 as part of Operation "First Lightning".

title: Fat Man


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False Claims Act of 1863

The False Claims Act of 1863 (FCA) is an American federal law that imposes liability on persons and companies (typically federal contractors) who defraud governmental programs. It is the federal government's primary litigation tool in combating fraud against the government. The law includes a qui tam provision that allows people who are not affiliated with the government, called "relators" under the law, to file actions on behalf of the government. This is informally called "whistleblowing", especially when the relator is employed by the organization accused in the suit. Persons filing actions under the Act stand to receive a portion (15–30%, depending on certain factors) of any recovered damages.

As of 2019, over 71% of all FCA actions were initiated by whistleblowers. Claims under the law have typically involved government health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid and TriCare), military, or other government spending programs. FCA actions dominate the list of largest pharmaceutical settlements. Between 1987 and 2019, the government recovered more than $62 billion under the False Claims Act.

History
Qui tam laws have history dating back to the Middle Ages in England. In 1318, King Edward II offered one third of the penalty to the relator when the relator successfully sued government officials who moonlighted as wine merchants. The Maintenance and Embracery Act 1540 of Henry VIII provided that common informers could sue for certain forms of interference with the course of justice in legal proceedings that were concerned with the title to land. This act is still in force today in the Republic of Ireland, although in 1967 it was extinguished in England. The idea of a common informer bringing suit for damages to the Commonwealth was later brought to Massachusetts, where "penalties for fraud in the sale of bread [are] to be distributed one third to inspector who discovered the fraud and the remainder for the benefit of the town where the offense occurred." Other statutes can be found on the colonial law books of Connecticut, New York, Virginia and South Carolina.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was marked by fraud on all levels, both in the Union north and the Confederate south. During the war, unscrupulous contractors sold the Union Army decrepit horses and mules in ill health, faulty rifles and ammunition, and rancid rations and provisions, among other unscrupulous actions. In response, Congress passed the False Claims Act on March 2, 1863,. Because it was passed under the administration of President Abraham Lincoln, the False Claims Act is sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Law".

Importantly, a reward was offered in what is called the qui tam provision, which permits citizens to sue on behalf of the government and be paid a percentage of the recovery. Qui tam is an abbreviated form of the Latin legal phrase qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur ("he who brings a case on behalf of our lord the King, as well as for himself") In a qui tam action, the citizen filing suit is called a "relator". As an exception to the general legal rule of standing, courts have held that qui tam relators are "partially assigned" a portion of the government's legal injury, thereby allowing relators to proceed with their suits.

U.S. Senator Jacob M. Howard, who sponsored the legislation, justified giving rewards to whistle blowers, many of whom had engaged in unethical activities themselves. He said, "I have based the [qui tam provision] upon the old-fashioned idea of holding out a temptation, and ‘setting a rogue to catch a rogue,’ which is the safest and most expeditious way I have ever discovered of bringing rogues to justice."

In the massive military spending leading up to and during World War II, the US Attorney General relied on criminal provisions of the law to deal with fraud, rather than using the FCA. As a result, attorneys would wait for the Department of Justice to file criminal cases and then immediately file civil suits under the FCA, a practice decried as "parasitic" at the time. Congress moved to abolish the FCA but at the last minute decided instead to reduce the relator's share of the recovered proceeds.

The law was again amended in 1986, again due to issues with military spending. Under President Ronald Reagan's military buildup, reports of massive fraud among military contractors had become major news, and Congress acted to strengthen the FCA.

The first qui tam case under the amended False Claims Act was filed in 1987 by an eye surgeon against an eye clinic and one of its doctors, alleging unnecessary surgeries and other procedures were being performed. The case settled in 1988 for a total of $605,000. However, the law was primarily used in the beginning against defense contractors. By the late 1990s, health care fraud began to receive more focus, accounting for approximately 40% of recoveries by 2008   Franklin v. Parke-Davis, filed in 1996, was the first case to apply the FCA to fraud committed by a pharma company against the government, due to bills submitted for payment by Medicaid/Medicare for treatments that those programs do not pay for as they are not FDA-approved or otherwise listed on a government formulary. FCA cases against pharma companies are often related to off-label marketing of drugs by drug companies, which is illegal under a different law, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; the intersection occurs when off-label marketing leads to prescriptions being filled and bills for those prescriptions being submitted to Medicare/Medicaid.

As of 2019, over 72% of all federal FCA actions were initiated by whistleblowers. The government recovered $62.1 billion under the False Claims Act between 1987 and 2019 and of this amount, over $44.7 billion or 72% was from qui tam cases brought by relators. In 2014, whistleblowers filed over 700 False Claims Act lawsuits. In 2014, the Department of Justice had its highest annual recovery in False Claims Act history, obtaining more than $6.1 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving fraud and false claims against the government. In fiscal year 2019, the Department of Justice recovered over $3 billion under the False Claims Act, $2.2 billion of which were generated by whistleblowers. Since 2010, the federal government has recovered over $37.6 billion in False Claims Act settlements and judgments. In 2020, the DOJ recovered $2.2 billion from FCA cases: $1.6 billion of that total was from cases filed under the FCA. Qui tam whistleblowers received a total of $309 million in whistleblower rewards in 2020.

Provisions
The Act establishes liability when any person or entity improperly receives from or avoids payment to the Federal government. The Act prohibits:

The statute provides that anyone who violates the law "is liable to the United States Government for a civil penalty of not less than $5,000 and not more than $10,000, as adjusted by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, plus 3 times the amount of damages which the Government sustains because of the act of that person." The False Claims Act requires a separate penalty for each violation of the statute. Under the Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act, False Claims Act penalties are periodically adjusted for inflation. In 2020, the penalties range from $11,665 to $23,331 per violation.
 * 1) Knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented, a false claim for payment or approval;
 * 2) Knowingly making, using, or causing to be made or used, a false record or statement material to a false or fraudulent claim;
 * 3) Conspiring to commit any violation of the False Claims Act;
 * 4) Falsely certifying the type or amount of property to be used by the government;
 * 5) Certifying receipt of property on a document without completely knowing that the information is true;
 * 6) Knowingly buying government property from an unauthorized officer of the government, and;
 * 7) Knowingly making, using, or causing to be made or used a false record to avoid, or decrease an obligation to pay or transmit property to the government.
 * 8) The False Claims act does not apply to IRS Tax matters.

Certain claims are not actionable, including:
 * 1) certain actions against armed forces members, members of the United States Congress, members of the judiciary, or senior executive branch officials;
 * 2) claims, records, or statements made under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 which would include tax fraud;

There are unique procedural requirements in False Claims Act cases. For example:
 * 1) a complaint under the False Claims Act must be filed under seal;
 * 2) the complaint must be served on the government but must not be served on the defendant;
 * 3) the complaint must be buttressed by a comprehensive memorandum, not filed in court, but served on the government detailing the factual underpinnings of the complaint.

In addition, the FCA contains an anti-retaliation provision, which allows a relator to recover, in addition to his award for reporting fraud, double damages plus attorney fees for any acts of retaliation for reporting fraud against the government. This provision specifically provides relators with a personal claim of double damages for harm suffered and reinstatement.

Under the False Claims Act, the Department of Justice is authorized to pay rewards to those who report fraud against the federal government and are not convicted of a crime related to the fraud, in an amount of between 15 and 25 (but up to 30% in some cases) of what it recovers based upon the whistleblower's report. The relator's share is determined based on the FCA itself, legislative history, Department of Justice guidelines released in 1997, and court decisions.

1986 changes
(False Claims Act Amendments

 * 1) The elimination of the "government possession of information" bar against qui tam lawsuits;
 * 2) The establishment of defendant liability for "deliberate ignorance" and "reckless disregard" of the truth;
 * 3) Restoration of the "preponderance of the evidence" standard for all elements of the claim including damages;
 * 4) Imposition of treble damages and civil fines of $5,000 to $10,000 per false claim;
 * 5) Increased rewards for qui tam plaintiffs of between 15 and 30% of the funds recovered from the defendant;
 * 6) Defendant payment of the successful plaintiff's expenses and attorney's fees, and;
 * 7) Employment protection for whistleblowers including reinstatement with seniority status, special damages, and double back pay.

2009 changes
On May 20, 2009, the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA) was signed into law. It includes the most significant amendments to the FCA since the 1986 amendments. FERA enacted the following changes:

 * 1) Expanded the scope of potential FCA liability by eliminating the "presentment" requirement (effectively overruling the Supreme Court's opinion in Allison Engine Co. v. United States ex rel. Sanders, 128 S. Ct. 2123 (2008));
 * 2) Redefined "claim" under the FCA to mean "any request or demand, whether under a contract or otherwise for money or property and whether or not the United States has title to the money or property" that is (1) presented directly to the United States, or (2) "to a contractor, grantee, or other recipient, if the money or property is to be spent or used on the Government's behalf or to advance a Government program or interest" and the government provides or reimburses any portion of the requested funds;
 * 3) Amended the FCA's intent requirement, and now requiring only that a false statement be "material to" a false claim;
 * 4) Expanded conspiracy liability for any violation of the provisions of the FCA;
 * 5) Amended the "reverse false claims" provisions to expand liability to "knowingly and improperly avoid[ing] or decreas[ing] an obligation to pay or transmit money or property to the Government;"
 * 6) Increased protection for qui tam plaintiffs/relators beyond employees, to include contractors and agents;
 * 7) Procedurally, the government's complaint will now relate back to the qui tam plaintiff/relator's filing;
 * 8) Provided that whenever a state or local government is named as a co-plaintiff in an action, the government or the relator "shall not [be] preclude[d]... from serving the complaint, any other pleadings, or the written disclosure of substantially all material evidence;"
 * 9) Increased the Attorney General's power to delegate authority to conduct Civil Investigative Demands prior to intervening in an FCA action.

With this revision, the FCA now prohibits knowingly (changes are in bold):

 * 1) Submitting for payment or reimbursement a claim known to be false or fraudulent.
 * 2) Making or using a false record or statement material to a false or fraudulent claim or to an ‘obligation’ to pay money to the government.
 * 3) Engaging in a conspiracy to defraud by the improper submission of a false claim.
 * 4) Concealing, improperly avoiding or decreasing an ‘obligation’ to pay money to the government.

2010 changes under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
On March 23, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also referred to as the health reform bill or PPACA) was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The Affordable Care Act made further amendments to the False Claims Act, including:

 * 1) Changes to the Public Disclosure Bar. Under the previous version of the FCA, cases filed by private individuals or "relators" could be barred if it was determined that such cases were based on a public disclosure of information arising from certain proceedings, such as civil, criminal or administrative hearings, or news media reports.  As a result, defendants frequently used the public disclosure bar as a defense to a plaintiff's claims and grounds for dismissal of the same. PPACA amended the language of the FCA to allow the federal government to have the final word on whether a court may dismiss a case based on a public disclosure.  The language now provides that "the court shall dismiss an action unless opposed by the Government, if substantially the same allegations or transaction alleged in the action or claim were publicly disclosed."  See 31 U.S.C. 3730(e)(4)(A).
 * 2) Original Source Requirement. A plaintiff may overcome the public disclosure bar outlined above if they qualify as an "original source," the definition of which has also been revised by PPACA.  Previously, an original source must have had "direct and independent knowledge of the information on which the allegations are based."  Under PPACA, an original source is now someone who has "knowledge that is independent of and materially adds to the publicly disclosed allegations or transactions." See 31 U.S.C. 3730(e)(4)(B).
 * 3) Overpayments. FERA redefined "obligation" under the FCA to include "retention of any overpayments."  Accordingly, such language imposed FCA liability on any provider who received Medicare/Medicaid overpayments (accidentally or otherwise) and fails to return the money to the government.  However, FERA also raised questions as to what exactly is involved in the "retention of overpayments" – for example, how long a provider had to return monies after discovering an overpayment.  PPACA clarified the changes to the FCA made by FERA.  Under PPACA, overpayments under Medicare and Medicaid must be reported and returned within 60 days of discovery, or the date a corresponding hospital report is due.  Failure to timely report and return an overpayment exposes a provider to liability under the FCA.
 * 4) Statutory Anti-Kickback Liability. The federal Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. 1320a-7b(b) (AKS) is a criminal statute which makes it improper for anyone to solicit, receive, offer or pay remuneration (monetary or otherwise) in exchange for referring patients to receive certain services that are paid for by the government.  Previously, many courts had interpreted the FCA to mean that claims submitted as a result of AKS violations were false claims and therefore gave rise to FCA liability (in addition to AKS penalties).  However, although this was the "majority rule" among courts, there were always opportunities for courts to hold otherwise. Importantly, PPACA changed the language of the AKS to provide that claims submitted in violation of the AKS automatically constitute false claims for purposes of the FCA.  Further, the new language of the AKS provides that "a person need not have actual knowledge … or specific intent to commit a violation" of the AKS.  Accordingly, providers will not be able to successfully argue that they did not know they were violating the FCA because they were not aware the AKS existed.

Practical application of the law
The False Claims Act has a detailed process for making a claim. Mere complaints to the government agency are insufficient to bring claims under the Act. A complaint (lawsuit) must be filed in a U.S. District Court (Federal court) in camera (under seal). The Department of Justice (DOJ) must thence investigate within 60 days, but it often enjoys several months' worth of extensions by the Court. In this time, the department decides whether it will pursue the case.

If the case is pursued by DOJ, the amount of the reward is less than if the Department of Justice had decided not to pursue the case and the plaintiff/relator continues the lawsuit himself. However, the success rate is higher in cases that the Department of Justice decides to pursue.

Technically, the government has several options in handing cases. These include:
 * 1) intervene in one or more counts of the pending qui tam action. This intervention expresses the Government's intention to participate as a plaintiff in prosecuting that count of the complaint. The department intervenes in fewer than 25% of filed qui tam actions.
 * 2) decline to intervene in one or all counts of the pending qui tam action. If the United States declines to intervene, the relator (i.e., plaintiff) may prosecute the action alone and thus on behalf of the United States, but the United States is not a party to the proceedings apart from its right to any recovery. This option is frequently used by relators and their attorneys.
 * 3) move to dismiss the relator's complaint, either because there is no case, or the case conflicts with significant statutory or policy interests of the United States.

In practice, there are two other options for the Department of Justice: There is case law where claims may be prejudiced if disclosure of the alleged unlawful act has been reported in the press, if complaints were filed to an agency instead of filing a lawsuit, or if the person filing a claim under the act is not the first person to do so. Individual states in the U.S. have different laws regarding whistleblowing involving state governments.
 * 1) settle the pending qui tam action with the defendant prior to the intervention decision. This usually, but not always, results in a simultaneous intervention and settlement with the Department of Justice (and is included in the 25% intervention rate).
 * 2) advise the relator that the Department of Justice intends to decline intervention.  This usually, but not always, results in dismissal of the qui tam action, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Federal income taxation of awards under FCA in the United States
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) takes the position that, for Federal income tax purposes, qui tam payments to a relator under FCA are ordinary income and not capital gains. The IRS position was challenged by a relator in the case of Alderson v. United States; and, in 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the IRS' stance. As of 2013, this remained the only circuit court decision on tax treatment of these payments.

Relevant decisions by the United States Supreme Court
In a 2000 case, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U.S. 765 (2000), the United States Supreme Court held that a private individual may not bring suit in federal court on behalf of the United States against a State (or state agency) under the FCA. In Stevens, the Supreme Court also endorsed the "partial assignment" approach to qui tam relator standing to sue, which had previously been articulated by the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals and is an exception to the general legal rule for standing.

In a 2007 case, Rockwell International Corp. v. United States, the United States Supreme Court considered several issues relating to the "original source" exception to the FCA's public-disclosure bar. The Court held that (1) the original source requirement of the FCA provision setting for the original-source exception to the public-disclosure bar on federal-court jurisdiction is jurisdictional; (2) the statutory phrase "information on which the allegations are based" refers to the relator's allegations and not the publicly disclosed allegations; the terms "allegations" is not limited to the allegations in the original complaint, but includes, at a minimum, the allegations in the original complaint as amended; (3) relator's knowledge with respect to the pondcrete fell short of the direct and independent knowledge of the information on which the allegations are based required for him to qualify as an original source; and (4) the government's intervention did not provide an independent basis of jurisdiction with respect to the relator.

In a 2008 case, Allison Engine Co. v. United States ex rel. Sanders, the United States Supreme Court considered whether a false claim had to be presented directly to the Federal government, or if it merely needed to be paid with government money, such as a false claim by a subcontractor to a prime contractor. The Court found that the claim need not be presented directly to the government, but that the false statement must be made with the intention that it will be relied upon by the government in paying, or approving payment of, a claim. The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 reversed the Court's decision and made the types of fraud to which the False Claims Act applies more explicit.

In a 2009 case, United States ex rel. Eisenstein v. City of New York, the United States Supreme Court considered whether, when the government declines to intervene or otherwise actively participate in a qui tam action under the False Claims Act, the United States is a "party" to the suit for purposes of Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A) (which requires that a notice of appeal in a federal civil action generally be filed within 30 days after entry of a judgment or order from which the appeal is taken). The Court held that when the United States has declined to intervene in a privately initiated FCA action, it is not a "party" for FRAP 4 purposes, and therefore, petitioner's appeal filed after 30 days was untimely.

In a 2016 case, Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, the United States Supreme Court sought to clarify the standard for materiality under the FCA. The court unanimously upheld the implied certification theory of FCA liability and strengthened the FCA's materiality requirement.

In a 2023 combined case, United States ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu Inc. and ''United States ex rel. Proctor v. Safeway'', a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court opinion rejected an attempt to dilute the FCA's "knowledge standard." Under the knowledge standard, a defendant is liable under the FCA if a false claim is "knowingly" submitted to the government for payment. The statute defines "knowingly" as acting with actual knowledge, deliberate ignorance, or reckless disregard. The unanimous opinion found that a defendant is liable if it submits a false claim to the government based on its own knowledge and subjective beliefs — not what an objectively reasonable person may have thought.

In a 2024 case, Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC, et al. 601 U. S. ____ (2024), a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court endorsed a lower burden of proof for whistleblowers, holding that whistleblowers do not need to prove that an employer acted with "retaliatory intent" in order to be protected under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Supreme Court found that a whistleblower needs only to prove that their actions in making a whistleblower complaint were a "contributing factor" in the employer's unfavorable action. The unanimous opinion found that liability hinges on a defendant’s “knowledge and subjective beliefs” — not what an objective, reasonable person would have thought — at the time they submitted their claims to the government.

State False Claims Acts
As of 2020, 29 states and the District of Columbia have false-claims laws modeled on the federal statute to protect their publicly funded programs from fraud by including qui tam provisions, which enables them to recover money at state level. Some of these state False Claims Act statutes provide similar protections to those of the federal law, while others limit recovery to claims of fraud related to the Medicaid program.

The California False Claims Act was enacted in 1987, but lay relatively dormant until the early 1990s, when public entities, frustrated by what they viewed as a barrage of unjustified and unmeritorious claims, began to employ the False Claims Act as a defensive measure.

In 1995, the State of Texas passed the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act (TMFPA), which specifically aims at combating fraud against the Texas Medicaid Program, which provides healthcare and prescription drug coverage to low-income individuals. The Texas law enacts state qui tam provisions that allow individuals to report fraud and initiate action against violations of the TMFPA, imposes consequences for noncompliance and includes whistleblower protections.

Australia
In Australia, The Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Act, was passed in December 2018 and went into effect in 2019. The law expanded protections for whistleblowers, allowing them to report misconduct anonymously, as well as applying anti-retaliation protections to additional kinds of whistleblowers. Importantly, the law does not provide for rewards for whistleblowers. There have been calls since 2011 for legislation modeled on the False Claims Act and for their application to the tobacco industry and carbon pricing schemes.

United Kingdom
In October 2013, the UK Government announced that it was considering the case for financially incentivising individuals reporting fraud in economic crime cases by private sector organisations, in an approach much like the US False Claims Act. The 'Serious and Organised Crime Strategy' paper released by the UK's Secretary of State for the Home Department sets out how that government plans to take action to prevent serious and organised crime and strengthen protections against and responses to it. The paper asserted that serious and organised crime costs the UK more than £24 billion a year. In the context of anti-corruption, the paper acknowledged that there was a need to not only target serious and organised criminals but also support those who seek to help identify and disrupt serious and organised criminality.

Three UK agencies, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, were tasked with considering the case for a US-style False Claims Act in the UK. In July 2014, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England Prudential Regulation Authority recommended Parliament enact strong measures to encourage and protect whistleblowers, but without offering whistleblower rewards, rejecting the US model.

Rule 9(b) circuit split
Under Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, allegations of fraud or mistake must be pleaded with particularity. All appeals courts to have addressed the issue of whether Rule 9(b) pleading standards apply to qui tam actions have held that the heightened standard applies. The Fifth Circuit, the Sixth Circuit, the Seventh Circuit, the Eighth Circuit,  the Tenth Circuit, and the Eleventh Circuit  have all found that plaintiffs must allege specific false claims.

In 2010, the First Circuit decision in ''U.S. ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Prods., L.P.(2009) and the Eleventh Circuit ruling in U.S. ex rel. Hopper v. Solvay Pharms., Inc.''(2009) were both appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court denied certiorari for both cases, however, declining to resolve the divergent appeals court decisions.

ACLU et al. v. Holder
In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Government Accountability Project (GAP) and OMB Watch filed suit against the Department of Justice challenging the constitutionality of the "seal provisions" of the FCA that require the whistleblower and the court to keep lawsuits confidential for at least 60 days. The plaintiffs argued that the requirements infringe the First Amendment rights of the public and the whistleblower, and that they violate the separation of powers, since courts are not free to release the documents until the executive branch acts. The government moved for dismissal, and the district court granted that motion in 2009. The plaintiffs appealed, and in 2011 their appeal was denied.

Examples
In 2004, the billing groups associated with the University of Washington agreed to pay $35 million to resolve civil claims brought by whistleblower Mark Erickson, a former compliance officer, under the False Claims Act. The settlement, approved by the UW Board of Regents, resolved claims that they systematically overbilled Medicaid and Medicare and that employees destroyed documents to hide the practice. The fraud settlement, the largest against a teaching hospital since the University of Pennsylvania agreed to pay $30 million in 1995, ended a five-year investigation that resulted in guilty pleas from two prominent doctors. The whistleblower was awarded $7.25M.

In 2010, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay over $81 million in civil and criminal penalties to resolve allegations in a FCA suit filed by two whistleblowers. The suit alleged that Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OMJPI) acted improperly concerning the marketing, promotion and sale of the anti-convulsant drug Topamax. Specifically, the suit alleged that OMJPI "illegally marketed Topamax by, among other things, promoting the sale and use of Topamax for a variety of psychiatric conditions other than those for which its use was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, (i.e., "off-label" uses)." It also states that "certain of these uses were not medically accepted indications for which State Medicaid programs provided coverage" and that as a result "OMJPI knowingly caused false or fraudulent claims for Topamax to be submitted to, or caused purchase by, certain federally funded healthcare programs.

In response to a complaint from whistleblower Jerry H. Brown II, the US Government filed suit against Maersk for overcharging for shipments to US forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a settlement announced on 3 January 2012, the company agreed to pay $31.9 million in fines and interest, but made no admission of wrongdoing. Brown was entitled to $3.6 million of the settlement.

The largest healthcare fraud settlement in history was made by GlaxoSmithKline in 2012 when it paid a total of $3 billion to resolve four qui tam lawsuits brought under the False Claims Act and related criminal charges. The claims include allegations Glaxo engaged in off-label marketing and paid kickbacks to doctors to prescribe certain drugs, including Paxil, Wellbutrin and Advair.

In 2013, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc., a pharmaceutical company acquired by Pfizer, Inc. in 2009, paid $490.9 million to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the unlawful marketing of its drug Rapamune for uses that were not FDA-approved and potentially harmful.

In 2014, CareFusion paid $40.1 million to settle allegations of violating the False Claims Act by promoting off label use of its products in the case United States ex rel. Kirk v. CareFusion et al., No. 10-2492. The government alleged that CareFusion promoted the sale of its drug ChloraPrep for uses that were not approved by the FDA. ChloraPrep is the commercial name under which CareFusion produced the drug chlorhexidine, used to clean the skin before surgery. In 2017, this case was called into question and was under review by the DOJ because the lead attorney for the DOJ serving as Assistant Attorney General in the case, Jeffery Wertkin, was arrested by the FBI on January 31, 2017, for allegedly attempting to sell a copy of a complaint in a secret whistleblower suit that was under seal.

In 2017, bio-pharmaceutical giant Celgene Corporation paid $240 million to settle allegations it sold and marketed its drugs Thalomid and Revlimid off-label in ''U.S. ex rel. Brown v. Celgene'', CV 10-03165 (RK) (C.D. Cal.).

In 2021, A South Carolina pain management company was ordered to pay $140 million under the False Claims Act after a judge in U.S. district court found it in default after fraud schemes.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: False Claims Act of 1863


text:
Talk:False Claims Act of 1863

Untitled
Who wrote what you submitted? If it was not you who did, do you have permission of the author for this material to be included in Wikipedia? -- SJK

I am the author of the article. It was originally submitted and published across Ohio as a Law You Can Use article. There are no limitations on its use or reprinting. Any questions about the false claims law act forward to my email warnermendenhall@hotmail.com

Ah, so you also wrote the material moved to the Details page that is coppied from http://www.geocities.com/warnermendenhall/Quitampp.htm. The Details page and the main page need to be re-written into the style of a general encyclopedia article. --Stephen Gilbert

Thanks for formatting it properly. It looks great. I didnt know how to reformat it after cutting and pasting it. Warner Mendenhall

The first paragraph has a reference to "Ethics and Computing Boyer". Is this a book? I don't have the book so I can't format the reference properly. In the interim, I am deleting the reference. Add it when you have the page number. Thanks!VK35 16:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

2009 amendments
According to "Reforms for American Homeowners and Consumers: President Obama Signs the Helping Families Save their Homes Act and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act" (White House Press Office, 2009-05-20), the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act (S.386), signed today, "modifies the False Claims Act (FCA) to eliminate the requirement that a false claim be presented to a federal official, or that it directly involve federal funds. It also amends the FCA reverse false claims provision to ensure that the knowing retention of an overpayment is a violation." 121a0012 (talk) 02:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I should point out that I didn't just stick this in the article because I don't fully understand the nature of and reason for the amendments. Hopefully someone with appropriate resources and knowledge can survey the coverage of this bill in the legal press and write a useful summary of it for the article.  121a0012 (talk) 02:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * A search for the terms "false claims act" "supreme court" also brings up a number of relevant pages. 121a0012 (talk) 02:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added some text to reference a new article about the Allison Engine case, which is essential background for S.386. 121a0012 (talk) 05:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

useful source
just making a note for me later, or for someone else. first article in this. Jytdog (talk) 00:44, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:False Claims Act of 1863