A recent article on Forbes.com put the whistleblower issue in perspective financially. In the last year, the Justice Department says that whistleblowers revealed $1.3 billion of fraud, mostly in the health care arena. This was apparently one of the bigger years for the Justice department. The whistleblowers were paid $190 million for their assistance.

This fiscal year, the Federal government recovered $3.1 billion in settlements from people and companies in whistleblower cases. The largest settlement was $920 million from Tenet Healthcare, the second largest hospital group in the country. Tenet was accused of overbilling the government for $806 million in Medicare and paying $49 million in kickbacks to doctors.

Tags: whistleblower, fraud, kickbacks