Another Whistle Blower

by Douglass, Carl;

  “Beats me,” Fisher says. “He’s a punctilious little plodder who always wants to please. He has made more money in the last three years than he has in the rest of his adult life. He assured me he would be here at one-thirty.”

  “It’s quarter to,” says Nelson pointedly. “Give him a call on his cell. See if there’s a hang-up. I have to get back to Miami late this afternoon. There’s a serious matter I have to attend to in Cooper City out in Broward County.”

  Cecil’s phone immediately goes to his phone message.

  “No answer, David, sorry.”

  Nelson nods and frowns. No one likes to see David Nelson frown.

  At two-thirty, the appointed hour, Cecil has not shown and remains unavailable on his phone. The IRS section secretary knocks on the conference room door and conveys an announcement:

  “Sorry, but Mr. Evans is running late. It will be another half an hour to forty-five minutes.”

  “Does Mr. Evans have any idea who we are? This is a case of a hundred bucks waiting on a dime, girlie,” says David.

  “He does,” she says with exaggerated courtesy. “He’s the IRS, and I am not ‘girlie.’”

  She closes the door and walks away.

  David fumes and begins pacing around the room.

  Cecil Edgington is not available with the team at three-fifteen when Henry Evans walks into the conference room and surveys the assembled self-styled corporate giants arrayed against him.

  “Which one of you is Cecil Edgington?” he asks brusquely.

  “He hasn’t made it yet. We are afraid he might have been in an accident or something,” answers Crandall.

  It sounds feeble, even to him.

  “The window of opportunity closes in fifteen minutes. I have another client waiting, and I assured him he would not have to wait any longer than that. If Edgington does not show by then, we will make another appointment for about two weeks from now. If he is a no-show at that time, we will issue a warrant,” Evans says and turns on his heel and leaves the room.

  “Bloody pipsqueak,” snorts John Wang. “Who does he think he is?”

  “Like the sweet little country secretary said, ‘He’s the IRS,’” says Crandall Fisher glumly.

  “If we can’t locate him through usual channels in three days, my staff will find him; and we will have an explanation. Call me if he does get hold of you. If I have to search, I’ll call you when I know what is going on. I may elect not to bother you all with the details of how my team and I will handle things,” Nelson tells Fisher.

  Fifteen minutes later, Nelson leaves the room to catch his plane back to Broward County for a visit with Dustin Bradshaw in Cooper City.

  The trip from Heber City, Utah, to Century City in Los Angeles is long, hot, dry—and boring. Quince Longely is the only one who even suggests a complaint.

  “How can anybody stand to live in a forsaken land of desolation like this? There aren’t even any rabbits left alive.”

  There is little idle conversation between Cecil, Andrea, and Ivory White’s team during the long trip. Ivory outlines the security plan he has in mind. Cecil and Andrea are so cowed with fear for their lives after learning the fates of Chick Sorenson and Sandy Kohler that they just listen to Ivory as he explains in clear, but general terms, how McGee and Associates would protect them. It is all so foreign that Cecil and Andrea can do little but hold hands squeezing tightly enough to hurt which becomes their tether to reality.

  They make only one stop—for gas, food, drinks, and other necessaries—and that is in an eclectic and useful place in Baker, California, well-known to travelers up and down I-15. It is called the Mad Greek, and you can get almost anything you want, just as in Alice’s Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie’s tongue-in-cheek anti-Vietnam War song. The weary travelers find burgers, Cokes, beer, gyro plate with zaziki dip, shawarmas, and homemade ice cream.

  Twelve hours after leaving cool Heber City, Cecil and the McGee team pull out of the reflector oven-level heat of Los Angeles and into the relative coolness of underground garage of Barrister Plaza at 1822 Century Park East. They take the express elevator to the twentieth floor. The receptionist is waiting for them.

  “Please take the executive elevator up to the twenty-second floor; everybody else is here and waiting for you.”

  The lavish offices of Rasmussen, O’Herligy, Rodriguez, and Applewhite occupy the twentieth to the twenty-second floor. The firm is a very large one having fourteen satellite offices and more than seven hundred attorneys sweating out their no-social-life existences. David Rasmussen has a reputation for ferocity and a take-no-prisoners philosophy of advocacy for his clients. He has an army of researchers to dig out every negative tidbit to use against his opponents, and is completely lacking in scruples when he seeks out the truth. The truth to him is that set of positive facts that benefits his clients, and lies are everything else. McGee & Associates Investigations had served him personally when Rasmussen was sued for legal malpractice by a client corporation who lost a fortune in a hotly contested case. The client’s case seemed beyond the reach of legal argument until McGee uncovered that a report used by the plaintiffs in the case had been falsified. Rasmussen was able to find a handwriting expert who confirmed McGee’s findings, and David believed that McGee held an important marker from him.

  The large conference room is filled with major executives occupying the chairs at the long mahogany table, and the support people circled around behind their supervisors.

  David Rasmussen stands up to greet the Edgingtons and the Ivory White team. Cecil, Andrea, and Ivory are shown to their seats at the table; Quince Longely and Able Drahman—the behemoth bodyguards—sit behind them.

  David makes quick introductions: “I’ll see if I can remember everybody. This is McGee, Ivory White, and Caitlin O’Brian, from McGee and Associates; Cecil and Andrea Edgington, who are the people for whom we are all here; DDFBI Russell Gaspero; Clinton Hemingway, my associate; Henry Lloyd Evans, an IRS agent from Ogden, Utah; Amil Sondregger, ASAC of the FBI’s east coast securities fraud division; and Michael L. Nielson, chief investigator from the SEC OCIE [Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations]. Have I missed anyone?”

  The support staff employees know that in Rasmussen’s eyes, they are not people enough to rate an introduction. They keep their poker faces and pens at the ready.

  “This is such a complicated matter that it is hard to know where to start. I’ll take the lead and make sure we establish Cecil’s bona fides as an official whistleblower under the law,” says David. “The first order of business is to ask Cecil and Andrea officially if they accept me and the

  Rasmussen, O’Herligy, Rodriguez, and Applewhite firm as their designated attorneys in the qui tam False Claims Act case we will establish.”

  “We do,” answers Cecil decisively.

  “Initial on the contract where the red plastic arrows indicate and sign here, and here,” David instructs.

  “Now, without going into great detail, let me explain what the qui tam case law is about. First, we need to define ‘whistleblower.’ The legal definition of a whistleblower or ‘relator’—as the government prefers is—anyone who has and reports insider knowledge of illegal activities occurring in an organization. For a more technical definition of whistleblower, we can use the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, which advocates on the behalf of relators. Their definition of relators is: ‘An employee who discloses information that he or she reasonably believes is evidence of illegality, gross waste or fraud, mismanagement, abuse of power, general wrongdoing, or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. Typically, whistleblowers speak out to parties that can influence and rectify the situation. These parties include the media, organizational managers, hotlines, or congressional members/staff, to name a few.’ That definition applies for state, federal and international cases, and, I might add, to businesses. There are cases such as this one where there is developing evidence that a whistleblower informing against the ON
PMC [OrganoNatural Pharmaceutical Marketing Consortium] including HealthFirst, PharmaPerfect, FitnessSupplementAid, and ZyterBrothers-Technologies pharmaceutical companies may reasonably expect serious reprisal. Ralph Nader coined the phrase in the early 1970s to avoid the negative connotations found in other words such as informers, snitches, and rats.

  “Under US government law, in order to be considered a whistleblower in the United States, a federal employee must have reason to believe that his or her employer has violated some law, rule or regulation; must testify or commence a legal proceeding on the legally protected matter; or refuses to violate the law. In cases where whistleblowing on a specified topic is protected by statute, US courts have generally held that such whistleblowers are protected from retaliation. That principle of law is largely—but not universally upheld—in state law as well. Fortunately for our present purposes, California has a strong whistleblower law. For that reason, my firm will file its qui tam case here.

  “In every case which comes to the attention of the government—and a qui tam filing is made—it is essential to file the whistleblower lawsuit as quickly as possible, since the government applies a “first to file” rule, meaning that the first person who brings suit against an entity allegedly defrauding the government—and only the first person, no matter if that suit is the best, most detailed, or most comprehensive—is entitled to the government reward. That whistleblower or relator then becomes the ‘original source.’ The rule is intended to prompt fast reporting of fraud, and generally applies in most court jurisdictions.

  “The working premise is that this qui tam False Claims Act case will be filed under seal in courts around the country supervising the various complicated aspects and will be treated as clients having claims filed under the Internal Revenue Service’s whistleblower program. In our qui tam case here, both those directly in suit and those which are beginning to come under investigation are alleged to be involved in a variety of fraud on federal government programs, including schemes by the large health care companies and institutions to defraud Medicare and Medicaid. All we have learned thus far is that IRS whistleblower client, Cecil Edgington, will supply evidence involving tens of millions of dollars, maybe several billions of dollars’ worth of tax fraud against the government.

  “Part of the Medicare fraud that we believe is going on in this case we are launching is that ambulance companies in almost every state in the union and in complicity with the consortium will be found to have defrauded the US government by billing for nonmedically necessary transports. We believe this will amount to several millions of dollars as well.”

  “Let’s take a short break, David. This is complicated stuff, and we need to keep sharp.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Fifteen minutes and nearly a dozen Cokes and energy drinks later, they reassemble. Attorney David Rasmussen resumes.

  “One could ask, what is the basis for Cecil Edgington to sue since he has not suffered direct personal harm? Qui tam lawsuits have flourished in the last several years because they allow private citizens to sue on behalf of the government even though the individual has suffered no personal harm. The US government has reaped more than $20 billion from qui tam lawsuits since 1986—when the law was bolstered—and whistleblowers have collected an average of roughly sixteen percent—and in some cases as much as thirty percent—of government recoveries. That higher percent is based on the value and scope of the whistleblower’s revelations and cooperation. We are confident that Cecil Edgington will be in that category. Everything we do will remain sealed for important reasons that DDFBI Gaspero will enumerate, but when our combined efforts hit the news, it will be as big as the Pfizer scandal and even the fall of investment bank Bear Stearns and nonbank Lehman Brothers due to the subprime lending fiasco.

  “So, why choose Rasmussen, O’Herligy, Rodriguez, and Applewhite? It is because—especially in California—we are standout leaders in helping the average citizen whistleblower citizens navigate the complexities of the US False Claims Act in getting their rightful rewards from actions in which their knowledge and information helped the government recover money from companies or individuals. We have forged what can be called partnerships with private industry, governments, and law enforcement to get the job done.

  “The American public does not know a tenth of what the community of qui tam attorney firms has saved them. While cases of fraud against the government come in many forms, the strong majority and most costly for the US public involves health care fraud by pharmaceutical companies, hospital corporations, and clinical laboratories as in this case. They overbill the government, often through the Medicare and Medicaid programs, for drugs, services, and devices. We know how they do it, where they hide the money, and how they coerce individuals and corporations to cheat. We are determined to bring down the ONPMC [OrganoNatural Pharmaceutical Marketing Consortium: HealthFirst, PharmaPerfect, FitnessSupplementAid, and ZyterBrothersTechnologies]; we are determined to exonerate our client, Cecil Edgington; and we are determined to get him his just due.”

  It is now time for the FBI to speak in the persons of DDFBI Russell Gaspero and Amil Sondregger, the SAC of the FBI’s East Coast securities fraud division.

  “We have launched an investigation into the deaths of Owen Singleton and Patricia Ann Bethers, which are fairly old cases, and for a man named Dustin Bradshaw who was found to be a victim to a faked suicide in Cooper City in Broward County, Florida, by Miami area police. In that case, Mr. Bradshaw was visited a couple of days before by someone from the consortium. His wife and sister were present during the conversation and informed us that it got ugly when Bradshaw refused to sign a hold-harmless note for a high six-figure sum and told the consortium agent that he was going to launch a class-action with a famous—or infamous—depending on your side of the question, attorney in Miami. His relatives said he was sick, but not that sick, and he was determined to bring down the consortium if it took him to his last breath. He was a Roman Catholic who was adamantly opposed to suicide.

  “We are also involved—or more accurately, beginning to be involved—in the alleged financial crimes. To that end we plan to start with the alleged health care fraud. The FBI HCFU [Health Care Fraud Unit] has been brought onboard. They oversee investigations targeting individuals and/or organizations who are suspected of defrauding public and private health care systems. This consortium case is the ideal one for them to pursue. Areas they will be investigating include billing for services not rendered, billing for a higher reimbursable service than performed—upcoding—performing unnecessary services, kickbacks, unbundling of tests and services to generate higher fees, DME [durable medical equipment] fraud, pharmaceutical drug diversion, and Internet pharmacy sales. All of those appear to apply.

  “Our FAU [Forensic Audit Unit] is on board as well. The unit was established to support all FBI investigative matters requiring a forensic financial investigation. The FAU provides oversight of the forensic accountant and financial analyst programs, ensuring that the FBI’s financial investigative needs and priorities are continuously addressed. Key to the FAU’s mission is developing, managing, and enhancing the FoA and FA programs to ensure that FBI financial investigative matters are expedited with the high level of expertise required in an increasingly complex global financial system. When we finally sweep in to make arrests, we want the evidence to be overwhelming. We also want to get to these alleged crooks before they suspect that we are after them.

  “Medical and pharmaceutical companies are big business. They have the potential to do very significant financial harm to the government, to companies, and to average people. Their activities are financially ruinous when they are criminal in intent and action. The FBI corporate fraud investigations will involve looking into falsification of financial information of public and private corporations, making false accounting entries and/or misrepresentations of their financial condition; we will be looking very carefully to find if they have been cooking their books, even to the poin
t of keeping two sets of books. Our forensic accountants along with the SEC will be looking for fraudulent trades designed to inflate profit or hide losses; and illicit transactions designed to evade regulatory oversight. We are all but certain we will find flagrant abuses in those areas. We always do.

  “Again, along with the SEC, we will seek evidence of self-dealing by corporate insiders. Are they involved in insider trading—trading based on material, nonpublic information—like are their corporate insiders leaking proprietary information and reaping the financial benefits of knowing that their stock shares will be affected? Are the consortium’s attorneys involved in merger and acquisition negotiations leaking info or matchmaking firms facilitating information leaks? Do they influence traders to facilitate profiting or avoiding losses through trading? And most importantly, are they giving payoffs or bribes in exchange for leaked information, receiving or paying out kickbacks or bribes? Do the executives misuse corporate property for personal gain? And the IRS will be in partnership with us to analyze for individual tax violations related to self-dealing.

  “Will we find—as we almost always do—instances of obstruction of justice designed to conceal any of those types of criminal conduct, particularly when the obstruction impedes the inquiries of the SEC, the IRS and other regulatory agencies, and/or law enforcement agencies like the FBI, the financial crimes investigators, and other police agencies in the states?

  “As you can begin to appreciate, we will come down like a ton of bricks on the heads of the consortium and its group of big pharma companies. We plan to pursue organized crime statutes, RICO statutes, and evidence for complicity in an ongoing criminal enterprise. We will have a small army involved in tracking down and prosecuting the harm—physical, emotional, and financial—caused to vulnerable members of our society.

  “The key witness—in fact, the linchpin—in this investigation and eventual prosecution is going to be Cecil Edgington of Salt Lake City, Utah.”