§4.13 A. Introduction

• Jurisdiction: New York

A. Introduction

The federal False Claims Act (FCA), which prohibits fraud on the federal government, has generated a large number of enforcement actions by government and qui tam plaintiffs (also called “relators” or, more informally, “whistleblowers”) in connection with a wide variety of federal programs. Because of the success of the federal FCA, the federal government invited the states to develop their own FCAs through a provision in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. That provision authorized the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General to grant any state with an FCA meeting certain criteria the right to keep a larger share of any recovery for Medicaid fraud obtained under the state FCA.⁴⁴²

New York accepted the federal invitation. The New York False Claims Act (NY FCA) was signed into law on April 9, 2007, as part of an omnibus budget act.⁴⁴³ The Act expressly provides that it shall...