COROPRATE CRIME REPORTER
Trying
to Drain a Swamp With a Garden Hose
23 Corporate Crime Reporter 20(11), May 21, 2009
The Justice Department is trying to drain a swamp of fraud with a garden hose.
That’s the take of Patrick Burns, communications director at Taxpayers Against Fraud.
“They have diverted entirely new rivers of fraud into the swamp,” Burns told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “And then you go and look at the U.S. Department of Justice. It has good, hard-working honest people working there. But there are not enough of them. We are trying to drain a swamp with a garden hose. And that’s not a program for success.”
“There are only about 100 cases a year being moved in the False Claims Act arena,” Burns said. “And it hasn’t gone up – or down. That’s as many cases that can run through the pipe. And that’s a problem. If you have an expanding swamp of fraud, you need to expand the pipe you are using to drain. And that’s where Congress and the White House have fallen down on the job.”
The fiscal year 2010 budget of the U.S. Department of Justice is for $26.7 billion, Burns said. And yet the Civil Division is slated to get only $10 million more. And half of that is to go to automated litigation support.
“What has hammered America to its knees over the past decade? It hasn’t been terrorism,” Burns said. “It’s been fraud – massive fraud. Jaw dropping levels of fraud – from Bernie Madoff, to Bank of America. It’s just astounding.”
“And we need to change the culture. And I’m not sure we are going to be able change the culture of big business unless we fully fund the fraud fighters at the U.S. Department of Justice. We have great people there. Let’s triple the size of the Civil Division. That’s where I would start.”
Burns spends much of his day advising whistleblowers.
He take three to five calls a day – on average.
“One of the things that is important for a whistleblower to realize is that as they enter the process, they need to contemplate carefully and slowly,” Burns said. “This is like going to war. You should not rush into it. You should talk to your wife. You should talk to your family. If there is not a lot of money at the end of the rainbow, you probably shouldn’t do it. This will be vicious. And at the end of it, you will be so hammered that it will change your life forever. Being a whistleblower is not for wimps.”
“Companies isolate you, they humiliate you, they terminate you, they exhaust you. And at the end of it, everything you think about humans, everything you were taught – is open for reconsideration. We were taught that if you do good you will get good. And if you do bad, you’ll get bad. You learn that is a lie.”
Burns says about 15 percent of whistleblower wannabes are “insane.” Another big chunk have a solid False Claims Act case, but they are fatally flawed – in one way or another.
About 75 to 80 percent of all False Claims Act cases are not joined by the government and most of them end up on the cutting room floor.
“When the government declines a case, it’s like a teeter-totter,” Burns said. “The forces change on you very rapidly, and not to the benefit of the whistleblower.”
[For a complete transcript of the Interview with Patrick Burns, see 23 Corporate Crime Reporter 20(11), May 18, 2009, print edition only.]
Corporate
Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
202.737.1680