CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Raspanti
Says Defense Procurement Fraud is on the Comeback Trail
23 Corporate Crime Reporter 17, April 24, 2009
Defense procurement fraud is on the comeback trail.
And Marc Raspanti, one of the nation’s leading False Claims Act attorneys, is dusting off his defense procurement manuals in preparation for the new qui tam cases that are coming down the pike.
Raspanti is a partner at Pietragallo, Gordon, Alfano, Bosick & Raspanti in Philadelphia.
When he got started, as a young lawyer in the 1980s, defense procurement fraud was the rage.
That’s been pushed aside now by health care fraud.
But Raspanti sees defense procurement fraud coming on strong.
“Defense contracting is coming back,” Raspanti told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “I can’t imagine it won’t come back to the same levels at the beginning of my career. I’m gearing back up. I’m dusting up the FARS and the DARS. The new administration inherited somebody else’s war. There really wasn’t much that was done in terms of defense procurement fraud – amazingly. That’s going to change once the new administration is firmly entrenched.”
“The other area that we see a rising uptick in is the area of financial fraud. I’m studying the TARP and stimulus package. The entire focus of the country is on that. And when the focus of the country is on it, the focus of prosecutors is on it. That’s where I am at now. Health care will continue to be in the forefront. Most of the money in America is spent on defense procurement and health care. So, that’s where the action will be.”
Raspanti is one of those rare lawyers who does both white collar criminal defense – he heads the white collar practice at his firm – and plaintiffs side qui tam cases.
But he says he’s very comfortable doing both.
“I never saw it to be the anomaly it seems to be,” Raspanti said. “I was drawn to the qui tam statute – literally about a year after it was passed. I used to go to a white collar seminar at Georgetown Law School. I still do. One of the speakers at that seminar in 1988 talked about the new statute that had just been passed. I became intrigued. I was just fresh from being a prosecutor. I had been doing a fair amount of defense on the health care side.”
“When my first client walked in about 1989 – it was a health care client. There weren’t really that many lawyers doing health care fraud of any kind back then.”
“Someone thought it was an employment issue. I didn’t think it was an employment issue. It really was a qui tam case. That was my first qui tam case. And I settled that for about $1.5 million.”
“Number one, I have always thought that the skills that make you a good white collar lawyer make you a good qui tam lawyer.”
“Number two, I work with or against federal and state prosecutors all over the country. So, I have good working relationships and credibility with them. I have drawn the distinction for the most part in that I will handle serious criminal cases, but I don’t really defend qui tam cases on the civil side. That was the wall I built for myself. And for the most part, it really has worked out. If I have a criminal case not involved with the qui tam case, I’ll handle the criminal case. I’ve been very effective doing that. And I’ll send out the defense of the qui tam case to one of my colleagues who are more than happy to accept the referral.”
Has there ever been a time when you are representing a white collar criminal case and you say to yourself – damn, I wish I could be on the other siding of this bringing a qui tam action against this company?
“You would think that would happen to me more often,” Raspanti says. “But I can’t think more than two or three times that has happened to me. What has happened to me more often – and it’s kind of funny – I will get a call from a target of some investigation, looking to hire me as a criminal defense lawyer. But I represent the individual who has filed the qui tam lawsuit under seal. And so I have worked out a code with my white collar colleagues. I call them and I say – I have a situational conflict. And – would you like to take this representation? And I never talk to them about it. I never talk to the potential client. And everybody is happy.”
“I settled the SmithKline Beecham case in the late 1990s for $334 million. It was the third largest case at the time. I said to my wife – that’s the end of my white collar criminal defense practice. I would never be able to have the same kind of practice that I had.”
“But that particular case had a strange ending, that you might recall. When it came time to get paid by the Justice Department, they thought that I deserved less than I did.”
“I ended up with a strange mystical change in the arrangement of the chairs. The people I had been working with turned against me. And I ended up having the first or second longest relator’s share fight in history.”
Raspanti says all ended well – and even boosted his white collar criminal defense practice.
“It was a nasty, long, protracted battle. It got a lot of publicity. I ended up taking some hits, which reduced the relator’s share down. But the funny thing is that clients saw not the plaintiff’s work that I had done with the government to secure the settlement, but the fact that I was fighting with the government. They said – if this guy was willing to take on the Justice Department and succeed, he might be the guy we need to have as an attorney.”
[For a complete transcript of the Interview with Marc Raspanti, see 23 Corporate Crime Reporter 17(11), April 27, 2009, print edition only.]
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