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The figure is up from $3.2bn the previous year, which was also a record, and means the department has recouped $13.3bn since the start of 2009.
Powerful tool
North Carolina news web site WRAL reports that Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West said the federal False Claims Act is the most powerful tool in the government's legal arsenal for protecting the integrity of government programmes in areas such as health care and defence contracting.
Stuart Delery, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division, added that fraud against the government is ‘an epidemic that really reaches every aspect of our daily lives’.
Whistle-blowers
The figures show that in the past year department officials recovered $3bn in health care fraud cases under the False Claims Act, plus another $1.4bn in housing and mortgage-related cases.
Mr West added that private-sector whistle-blowers, who come forward to report fraud often ‘often at great personal risk’, were a key catalyst to the record numbers. It is understood that some $3.3bn of the recovered $4.9bn came from whistle-blower cases.
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