Since writing briefly yesterday about how federal investigators have raided three Caterpillar office buildings last week, in what may be a major tax evasion case, I kept going back to the New York Times article. The more I read it, the more I kept saying to myself that this could be something really major as it relates to the growing trend of U.S. Corporations accumulating trillions offshore to save on taxes. In addition, the details of the article raise some interesting and mysterious questions about an analysis of Caterpillar conducted by a Dartmouth professor Leslie Robinson, who teaches financial accounting in the MBA program and who before entering academia, worked as a CPA in the tax division of Ernst & Young. I predict that the New York Times article is just a seed of a story that will have long legs and may lead to revelations of massive tax fraud to the tune of billions.

First, some items of interest I found which will set the foundation: Jesse Drucker is a Reporter for the New York Times, who was hired there last year from the projects and investigations team at Bloomberg News. He has been writing about corporate taxes for years and one piece revealed how Google avoided billions in taxes using two obscure tax shelters known as the “Double Irish” attributing profits to a Bermuda mailbox.

Somehow, Jesse got his hands on an 85 – page analysis of Caterpillar’s overseas tax structure involving billions of dollars and a Caterpillar subsidiary in Switzerland. Drucker quoted directly from the report authored by Professor Leslie A. Robinson and which was commissioned by the government but he does not say which agency. Drucker writes that in the report she wrote that she was asked to provide a written opinion of Caterpillar’s financial reporting relating to various tax accounting standards as pertaining to the investigation of Caterpillar by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General.  Lead number one. It is possible that Dr. Robinson was hired by this agency office. It is not clear who leaked the report to Drucker or why but Dr. Robinson when called by the Times refused comment.

After the Congressional Budget Office released its assessment of the American Health Care Act predicting an increase of 24 million Americans without health insurance by 2026, there was an interesting response from Senate Republicans. They suggested certain changes to the bill which, they said, would increase the chances of it being approved by the Senate. First, they want to see lower insurance costs for the poorer, older Americans and second an increase in funding for states with higher populations of hard to insure people,

The Governors of most all of the states, including Republican Governors voiced their anxiety  on how to deal with the bill’s proposed roll back on Medicaid expansion which would leave the poor with fewer dollars.

Because the bill is being pushed towards votes so quickly, what is obviously missing in is a reasoned, articulated analyses of the various components of the law, all of which are explained through both real data as well as anecdotal examples. The reason this is so important is that assuring its viability requires both the understanding and acceptance of both the healthcare and insurance communities as well as the trust of the public at large. This means that clear and concise communication is crucial. It has not happened yet.

Credit Suisse must pay $5.28 billion to settle Department of Justice chargesrelated to Credit Suisse’s conduct in the packaging, securitization, issuance, marketing and sale of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) between 2005 and 2007.  The resolution announced today requires Credit Suisse to pay $2.48 billion as a civil penalty under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA).  It also requires the bank to provide $2.8 billion in other relief, including relief to underwater homeowners, distressed borrowers and affected communities, in the form of loan forgiveness and financing for affordable housing.  Investors, including federally-insured financial institutions, suffered billions of dollars in losses from investing in RMBS issued and underwritten by Credit Suisse between 2005 and 2007.

Under the terms of this settlement, Credit Suisse will pay $2.48 billion as a fine for its conduct. And Credit Suisse has pledged $2.8 billion in relief to struggling homeowners, borrowers, and communities affected by the bank’s lending practices.

“Credit Suisse claimed its mortgage backed securities were sound, but in the settlement announced today the bank concedes that it knew it was peddling investments containing loans that were likely to fail,” said Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer. “That behavior is unacceptable. Today’s $5.3 billion resolution is another step towards holding financial institutions accountable for misleading investors and the American public.”

Marc Tupler, a former vice president at the Santa Fe Wells Fargo branch , says his superiors knew exactly what was happening when employees created millions if unauthorized accounts since 2011. He has also filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for raising the issue with his supervisors. His suit in state District Court alleges wrongful discharge, malicious breach of contract, and intentional infliction of mental and emotional distress.

Fox News has sidelined senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano after he said  former President Barack Obama asked British intelligence to wiretap Donald Trump and his allies during the presidential campaign.

On March 4, the President Tweeted, “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” before the November election. A week later, Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge, appeared on Fox and Friends, saying  that unnamed sources told him that Obama asked British intelligence agencies to spy on Trump and his associates in violation of U.S. law. Herepeated the claim in a column published by Fox News.

Last Friday, The President  blamed the rucus on Fox News.   “All we did was quote a very talented legal mind … so you shouldn’t be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox,” Trumpt said.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating four major insurance companies four insurance companies, alleging that they submitted false Medicare claims to increase risk adjustment payments and kept overpayments from CMS.

They include, Aetna,  Cigna subsidiary Bravo Health, Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Health Net and Louisville, Ky.-based Humana, according to papers filed last week in a Los Angeles federal court. The insurers were included in the same lawsuit the DOJ joined last month  Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group and its subsidiary WellMed Medical Management. The lawsuit alleged the payers used incorrect coding to increase Medicare Advantage risk scores.

The allegations were originally presented by Benjamin Poehling, former finance director of UnitedHealthcare Medicare and Retirement. Mr. Poehling filed the U.S. False Claims Act lawsuit under seal in 2011 against 15 companies. He accused the payers of defrauding “hundreds of millions — and likely billions — of dollars,” from Medicare, the lawsuit states.

Payroll tax evasion is exploding says the IRS inspector general for taxes  in a newly released report. As of the end of 2015, 1.4 million employers owed approximately $45.6 billion in unpaid employment taxes, interest and penalties. Three-quarters of that was owed by employers who hadn’t paid payroll taxes in a year. That group has tripled in the past 17 years.While that noncompliance has been soaring, however, IRS enforcement has been waning because of understaffing at the agency. The number of employers penalized for underpaying payroll taxes is down nearly 40 percent in the past five years, and there are fewer than 100 criminal convictions a year related to evasion.

“Employment tax embezzlement is an especially egregious crime because the employer or payroll service provider violates their fiduciary responsibility to remit the taxes on behalf of their employees,” said J. Russell George, the IRS inspector general for taxes.

Importantly these very taxes serve to fund programs such as Medicare and Social Security. In many cases,  businesses  skip employment tax payments intentionally as a way of freeing up cash. The inspector general recommended that the IRS use data analytics to try to root out such offenders and refer them for prosecution. Whistleblowers revealing major tax fraud to the IRS who qualify can receive upto 30 percent of what the government recovers.

Companies, including pharmacies and their parent entities are frequently trying to find ways to attract the buying public to purchase their pharma products rather than from their competition. However, the law does not allow beneficiaries of government health insurance programs like Medicare, Medicaid or TriCare to receive anything of value in return for their business. Such payments of money or anything of value violates the federal anti-kickback statutes. In one case this year, Walgreen’s agreed to pay $50 million to the government and states to settle allegations that it illegally gave discounts to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to encourage them to fill their prescriptions at Walgreen’s.

Interestingly, Walgreens knew it could not allow beneficiaries of government health insurance programs into its Prescription Savings Club, as it published materials saying they were ineligible. Despite this, Walgreens marketed the program to them paying employees $1 to $5 for each customer enrolled.

As part of the settlement agreement in the case, Walgreen’s admitted it enrolled people in government health insurance programs into the discount club. This was a whistleblower case taken by Marc Baker, a former Florida Walgreens pharmacy manager who brought he suit in 212 and which settled this year. Baker eceived $9.7 million according to the settlement agreement.

The Department of Justice has joined a whistleblower case against Paramedics Plus LLC, a large ambulance companies, asserting that is has been engaged in a 15 year kickbacks scheme. defrauding the government of $20 million. The lawsuit alleges that the company paid $20 million in kickbacks to Oklahoma’s Emergency Medical Services  and its President Herbert Stephen Williamson in cash, political contributions and other expenses for lucrative contracts for ambulance services.

Paramedics Plus said the government’s claim for hundreds of millions in damages “threatens to destroy an entire system of hospitals upon which thousands of East Texans depend for medical care,” all without any claim that Medicare or Medicaid lost even one penny. There are no allegations the EMSA inflated its charges or overbilled, and there’s no claim that patients received substandard care, it said.

The EMSA is a public trust entity, which is run by public employees and owns and leases ambulances, but doesn’t have its own drivers, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, the DOJ said in its complaint. Those services are what Paramedics Plus contracted to provide. The EMSA would then bill Medicare, Oklahoma’s Medicaid program, private payors and patients for those services.

Santander’s subprime auto-lending division will pay $26 million to settle allegations that it provided unfair, high-interest loans to car buyers they knew could not repay them, repeating a pattern of mortgage lenders in the run-up to the last housing bust. Massachusetts will receive $22 million and Delaware will receive $4 million.

This is the first of its kind relating to how financial institutions packaged subprime auto loans into securities and resold them to investors.

Santander has implemented new controls and oversight practices of its auto-lending business, bank officials said.

The Department of Justice joined whistleblower’s lawsuit against  UnitedHealth Group accused of fraud in its popular Medicare Advantage health plans. The suit, first brought by whistleblower James Swoben in 2009, on Friday in federal court in Los Angeles accused the insurer of “gaming” the Medicare Advantage payment system by “making patients look sicker than they are.”  Damages may exceed $1 billion according to his counsel. Medicare Advantage is an alternative to traditional Medicare. The privately run health plans have enrolled more than 18 million elderly and people with disabilities — about a third of those eligible for Medicare — at a cost to taxpayers of more than $150 billion a year.

On Monday, the government said it wants to consolidate the Swoben case with another whistleblower action filed in 2011 by former UnitedHealth executive Benjamin Poehling and unsealed in March by a federal judge. Poehling also has alleged that the insurer generated hundreds of millions of dollars or more in overpayments.

Jeffrey Newman represents whistleblowers.

The Virginia Department of Social Services is paying the United States $7,150,436 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act in its use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Department of Justice announced today. SNAP was formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. Under SNAP, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides eligible low-income individuals and families with financial assistance to buy nutritious food. Since 2010, SNAP has served on average more than 45 million Americans per month, and provided more than $71 million annually.

The federal government funds SNAP benefits, it relies on the states to determine whether applicants are eligible for benefits. to administer those benefits. However, USDA requires that the quality control processes the states use ensure that benefits are correctly awardedand accurately report states’ error rates in making eligibility decisions, according to the Justice Department.

VDSS admitted that, beginning in 2010, it retained Julie Osnes Consulting, a quality control consultant, to reduce its SNAP benefits determination error rate by training VDSS quality control workers to “use whatever means necessary” to find a benefits decision “correct” rather than finding an error. VDSS also admitted that if its quality control staff “could not find a way to make a benefits decision correct,” they were instructed to “find a reason to ‘drop’ the case, or eliminate it from the sample.” VDSS acknowledged that this outcome-driven method, as implemented by VDSS between 2010 and 2015, “injected bias into the case review process” because it was designed to lower VDSS’s reported error rate by falsely reporting errors as “correct” or eliminating them from the sample. Through its use of these biased methods, VDSS was improperly awarded USDA performance bonuses for 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Reports of Barclay’s Chief Executive Joes Staley’s efforts to locate and unmask the company whistleblower have apparently kicked off a major investigation by the Department of Justice to see if there was a violation of the Dodd Frank Act’s whistleblower protections. The letter was critical of the hiring of a senior bank exec. The New York Post has reported that Staley asked bank staff to contact postal inspectors to trace the author of the whistleblower letters sent to Board members after they hiring of Tim Main.

Barclay’s Board concluded that Staley had made an “honest” mistake believing he could identify the whistleblower, whose identity has not been discovered. They reprimanded Staley and adjusted his compensation significantly. Depending on what happens with the numerous investigations now pending, this may not be enough, especially of the scandal has a significant effect on the stock price.

Jeffrey Newman represents whistleblowers

Lawrence Young, D.P.M a Detroit podiatrist has been charged with participating in a $13.9 million healthcare fraud scheme in which he is accused of performing unnecessary foot surgeries on patients.

Prosecutors unsealed an indictment Thursday revealing that , Young has been charged with six counts of healthcare fraud, says the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Young is accused of making fraudulent claims for unneeded foot surgeries and other podiatric services that he never delivered. According to the indictment, Young owned two Michigan practices, Dearborn Podiatric Services and Georgetown Podiatric Services.

Since writing briefly yesterday about how federal investigators have raided three Caterpillar office buildings last week, in what may be a major tax evasion case, I kept going back to the New York Times article. The more I read it, the more I kept saying to myself that this could be something really major as it relates to the growing trend of U.S. Corporations accumulating trillions offshore to save on taxes. In addition, the details of the article raise some interesting and mysterious questions about an analysis of Caterpillar conducted by a Dartmouth professor Leslie Robinson, who teaches financial accounting in the MBA program and who before entering academia, worked as a CPA in the tax division of Ernst & Young. I predict that the New York Times article is just a seed of a story that will have long legs and may lead to revelations of massive tax fraud to the tune of billions.

First, some items of interest I found which will set the foundation: Jesse Drucker is a Reporter for the New York Times, who was hired there last year from the projects and investigations team at Bloomberg News. He has been writing about corporate taxes for years and one piece revealed how Google avoided billions in taxes using two obscure tax shelters known as the “Double Irish” attributing profits to a Bermuda mailbox.

Somehow, Jesse got his hands on an 85 – page analysis of Caterpillar’s overseas tax structure involving billions of dollars and a Caterpillar subsidiary in Switzerland. Drucker quoted directly from the report authored by Professor Leslie A. Robinson and which was commissioned by the government but he does not say which agency. Drucker writes that in the report she wrote that she was asked to provide a written opinion of Caterpillar’s financial reporting relating to various tax accounting standards as pertaining to the investigation of Caterpillar by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General.  Lead number one. It is possible that Dr. Robinson was hired by this agency office. It is not clear who leaked the report to Drucker or why but Dr. Robinson when called by the Times refused comment.

Marc Tupler, a former vice president at the Santa Fe Wells Fargo branch , says his superiors knew exactly what was happening when employees created millions if unauthorized accounts since 2011. He has also filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for raising the issue with his supervisors. His suit in state District Court alleges wrongful discharge, malicious breach of contract, and intentional infliction of mental and emotional distress.

Fox News has sidelined senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano after he said  former President Barack Obama asked British intelligence to wiretap Donald Trump and his allies during the presidential campaign.

On March 4, the President Tweeted, “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” before the November election. A week later, Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge, appeared on Fox and Friends, saying  that unnamed sources told him that Obama asked British intelligence agencies to spy on Trump and his associates in violation of U.S. law. Herepeated the claim in a column published by Fox News.

Last Friday, The President  blamed the rucus on Fox News.   “All we did was quote a very talented legal mind … so you shouldn’t be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox,” Trumpt said.

The Virginia Department of Social Services is paying the United States $7,150,436 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act in its use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Department of Justice announced today. SNAP was formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. Under SNAP, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides eligible low-income individuals and families with financial assistance to buy nutritious food. Since 2010, SNAP has served on average more than 45 million Americans per month, and provided more than $71 million annually.

The federal government funds SNAP benefits, it relies on the states to determine whether applicants are eligible for benefits. to administer those benefits. However, USDA requires that the quality control processes the states use ensure that benefits are correctly awardedand accurately report states’ error rates in making eligibility decisions, according to the Justice Department.

VDSS admitted that, beginning in 2010, it retained Julie Osnes Consulting, a quality control consultant, to reduce its SNAP benefits determination error rate by training VDSS quality control workers to “use whatever means necessary” to find a benefits decision “correct” rather than finding an error. VDSS also admitted that if its quality control staff “could not find a way to make a benefits decision correct,” they were instructed to “find a reason to ‘drop’ the case, or eliminate it from the sample.” VDSS acknowledged that this outcome-driven method, as implemented by VDSS between 2010 and 2015, “injected bias into the case review process” because it was designed to lower VDSS’s reported error rate by falsely reporting errors as “correct” or eliminating them from the sample. Through its use of these biased methods, VDSS was improperly awarded USDA performance bonuses for 2011, 2012, and 2013.