Editor's note: Each week, attorney Joel Hesch shows readers how to fight back against public fraud – for fun and profit.
I climbed into an airplane headed to India to help a team of doctors on a short-term medical mission trip a few years ago.
I noticed everyone traveled light, not even bringing along medicine. When I inquired, the medical missionaries nonchalantly explained they would buy what they needed overseas.
I scratched my head, knowing that India had one of the lowest levels of medical treatment per capita.
Eighteen hours later, I was in the back seat of a jeep heading to a remote village. I was amazed to see numerous small pharmacy storefronts in the city of Hyderabad.
The doctors arbitrarily chose one and took an empty suitcase to the counter. They began filling it with everyday medicines for back pain and allergies, as well as many less common drugs that I could not even pronounce.
Just then, I realized I had left my prescription for Allegra? at home and they added a week's supply to the order. When I asked how much I owed, one doctor smiled broadly and remarked, "Pills cost only pennies over here."
My blood boiled as I realized these drugs were manufactured in the U.S. and shipped overseas to be sold for a fraction of what we pay. Corporate greed leads to charging Americans what they can afford to pay, regardless of how little the pills actually cost to make.
A few years later, I became more outraged with the pharmaceutical industry as I learned of an even more repugnant aspect of corporate greed.
After working a dozen years as an attorney in the Fraud Section of the Department of Justice, I was assigned to its elite Pharmaceutical Fraud Team in Washington, D.C. I began seeing how, in my opinion, many pharmaceutical companies not only gouge every American buying medicine, but are systematically defrauding Medicare and Medicaid.
Because of widespread fraud, the Justice Department is authorized to pay whistleblower rewards of between 15 and 25 percent of what it recovers from a company cheating the government. This reward program applies to all 20 government agencies, including the military and Medicare. As a result of citizens' help, the Justice Department was able to recover $3.9 billion from just 16 pharmaceutical fraud cases. In these cases, the whistleblowers were handsomely rewarded with $700 million for stepping forward.
Those 16 cases are just the tip of the iceberg. It is time for all Americans to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies and others cheating the government – and cheating you.
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"Stop fraud, save taxes, and get paid!"