A private real-estate manager with more than $1 billion in assets under management has agreed to settle a whistleblower action for allegedly abusing a federal pandemic loans program meant for small businesses.

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The US Supreme Court on Monday will hear Wisconsin Bell Inc. argue that a False Claims Act suit accusing the company of defrauding a Federal Communications Commission program should be rejected because the suit doesn’t involve government money.

A whistleblower adequately alleged that California-based Hawthorne Machinery Co. and others violated the False Claims Act by misrepresenting how many employees the company had in order to receive a Paycheck Protection Program loan, a federal court said.

On September 17, 2024, the NYU Law Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE) hosted Nicole M. Argentieri, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, Brent Wible, Chief Counselor for the Criminal Division, and Molly Moeser, Chief of the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, as well as academics and distinguished counsel, for a discussion of the DOJ Criminal Division’s newly-announced Corporate Whistleblower Awards Program.

Science has a fraud problem. Highly cited research is often based on faked data, which causes other researchers to pursue false leads. In medical research, the time wasted by followup studies can delay the discovery of effective treatments for serious diseases, potentially causing millions of lives to be lost.

Covid-19 is still infecting and reinfecting millions of people around the world — causing more and more people to develop Long Covid. But public health and government agencies worldwide have failed to warn people about Long Covid and support those affected, and still aren’t effectively funding research to find effective treatments.