Tap Whistleblower History

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HISTORY OF WHISTLEBLOWER (DOUGLAS DURAND) Douglas Durand is the paragon of a corporate whistleblower. Shortly after stepping in as vice president of sales at TAP Pharmaceutical Products in early 1995, he began to suspect the company was conspiring with doctors to overcharge the federal government’s Medicare program by tens of millions of dollars. But instead of trying to fix the problem, he spent seven months gathering evidence of supposed fraud. Then he quit in 1996 and filed a secret lawsuit against TAP. One motive which is if he could prove the company was dirty; he would share a nice lump of any money TAP paid back to the feds. He spent eight years helping the government build its own case against the company, visiting prosecutors in four states and testifying before a grand jury in Boston. He compiled a list of alleged TAP conspirators and then called these former colleagues while the FBI listened in. Moreover, Durand later filed suit making similar allegations against a TAP rival, the former Zeneca Inc. The feds ultimately joined him, filing civil and criminal charges against TAP and prodding it into paying the government $885 million to settle the case–six times as much as the claimed overcharges. Douglas Durand cashed in: He received $126 million from the U.S. government. Now age 53, he retired and lives with his wife and daughter in the tony enclave of Tarpon Springs, Fla. Yet TAP itself was never accused of submitting bogus Medicare bills; it was charged under a little-known provision that holds medical suppliers accountable if others falsely bill the government for the suppliers’ products. On Oct. 3, 2001, the day prosecutors announced the settlement, they filed criminal fraud charges accusing TAP executives of perpetrating the overbilling scheme. This “sends a very strong signal to the pharmaceutical industry,” the prosecutor in the case, Michael

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