Incentives for Reporting Employers Violation of False Claims Act

In California, companies must interact with the State in many different ways. One way is that the state will grant large contracts to construction companies, utility companies, developers and many other types of businesses to complete work on the state’s behalf. Also, many companies must pay the state taxes, royalties and other fees based on the type of business the company conducts. So, between the various contracts companies can obtain and what they may need to pay the state, there is a lot of money to be gained or lost for these companies.

Some of these companies may feel like they could make more money if they falsified forms given to the state or overstate the funding they may need for a particular project in order to help their bottom line. This is illegal though and violates the False Claims Act. These violations can be very costly to the state as well and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. So, clearly the state has strong incentive to enforce these laws and hold the companies accountable.

However, most of the time the state will not know whether a form has been falsified or the company has tried to cheat the state out of money in a different way. Therefore, in many instances they rely on whistleblowers within the company to report the violations to the state. To help encourage employees who have knowledge of the illegal behavior to report these violations, the whistleblowers may be granted a percentage of the money received by the state from the company who violated the law. They are also protected from retaliation for doing so.

Companies in California are generally trying to make as much money as they can and some will violate the law in order to do so. The state relies on whistleblowers to report these violations and they could receive significant amounts of money as a reward for doing so. Experienced attorneys understand these sometimes complex cases and could guide one through it.