| Other types of fraud |  |
| Most qui tam cases involve Medicaid and Medicare fraud and defense contractor fraud. But fraud also occurs in other areas where the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually on goods and services. Some of the areas where fraud might occur and be the basis of a False Claims Act case are:
Public works projects and federal government
construction A construction company hired to build Army barracks recently settled a qui tam lawsuit that charged it did not follow contract plans and specifications, failed to report substantial construction defects and engaged in a cover-up to hide the problems. Research programs At academic medical centers, federal payments for research overhead, called indirect payments, total tens of millions of dollars a year. The government and the medical center determine a reasonable overhead rate for the hospital, then the government agrees to mark up each research grant by a fixed rate for the next year to cover incidental expenses. This usually includes items like heat and electricity bills and housekeeping for the part of the hospital used for the research, and sometimes even mortgage payments for lab buildings. One of the largest qui tam settlements involving a research grant was against New York University Medical Center, which paid $15.5 million to the federal government. The government said the medical center provided a "false, inaccurate and incomplete picture" of its overhead costs for research projects. The center allegedly gave the government waste disposal bills that were already paid by other sources, inflated housekeeping bills and counted as overhead unrelated items, such as food for the medical school commencement dinner. Customs Environmental programs In a recent case, an environmental testing firm settled a qui tam lawsuit that charged the firm had failed to properly test the level of hazardous substances in soil and water samples as required under contracts with the Army Corps of Engineers. Loan guarantees A cosmetology school and its owners paid $2 million to settle a qui tam case alleging false statements and certifications that the vocational school met all statutory and regulatory requirements to participate in the Guaranteed Student Loan and Pell Grant programs. According to the lawsuit, the school falsified time cards, attendance records and academic records to make it appear as though students were attending classes and maintaining satisfactory progress to qualify for the federal financial assistance. Underpayment of royalties on government-leased
land A qui tam lawsuit is pending against 14 major oil companies for knowingly undervaluing oil extracted from public and Indian lands to reduce the royalties they had to pay. The oil was taken from the Gulf of Mexico and western states. Agricultural subsidies and other agricultural
programs A major U.S. grain company paid $25 million to resolve a False Claims Act case that involved sales of agricultural products to Iraq through a foreign company participating in a Department of Agriculture program for exporters of agricultural products. Municipal bonds ("yield-burning") These refinancing transactions -- known as "advance refundings"-- permit municipalities to refinance their debt at lower interest rates when interest rates decline, and therefore lower their borrowing costs. Yield-burning occurs when a securities dealer purposely overcharges municipalities for Treasury securities needed for the refinancing. The excessive prices artificially reduce the overall yield on those securities. This practice is illegal because, by law, investments purchased with the proceeds of tax-exempt advance refunding bonds may not have higher aggregate yields than the yield earned on the tax-exempt bonds. Any excess yield must be paid to the U.S. Treasury. Reducing yield by overcharging is not a legitimate method of complying with the yield limitations. In the first settlement of a False Claims Act case of this kind, CoreStates Financial Corp. paid $3.4 million to the federal government to settle a qui tam case that said its brokerage arm for municipal bonds had engaged in yield-burning.
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