Economy of the United States

A settlement has been reached in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against Chevron Corporation, Texaco, Unocal Incorporated and their affiliates (the Chevron companies). They are accused of knowingly underpaying royalties.

The whistleblower's heirs (due to the original whistleblower's death) will receive $12,303,787.88.

The original whistleblower case that this lawsuit stemmed from was filed in February 1998. The government previously settled with Burlington Resources Inc. for $105.3 million, Shell Oil Company for $56 million and Dominion Exploration and Production Company for $2 million. 

The United States alleged the Chevron companies knowingly underpayed royalties owed on natural gas produced from federal and Indian leases from March 1988 to November 2008 and, consequently, that they paid less royalties than they owed to the United States and various Indian tribes. 

Each month, companies are required to report to the MMS the value of the natural gas produced from their federal and Indian leases and to pay a percentage of the reported value as royalties. The settlement resolves claims by the United States that the Chevron, Texaco and Unocal companies improperly deducted from royalty values the cost of boosting gas up to pipeline pressures, used affiliate transactions to falsely reduce the reported value of gas taken from federal and Indian leases, and improperly reported processed gas as unprocessed gas to reduce royalty payments.

A settlement has been reached to resolve False Claims Act Allegations against Beazer Homes USA Inc.  They are accused of fraudulent mortgage origination activities in connection with federally insured mortgages.

According to the agreement, Beazer will pay $5 million dollars, plus contingent payments of up to $48 million dollars to be shared with victimized private homeowners.

The federal government alleged that when Beazer Mortgage Corp made Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insured mortgage loans for the purchase of homes built by Beazer Homes USA Inc., the companies fraudulently and improperly: 1) required purchasers to pay "interest discount points" at closing, but then kept the cash and failed to reduce interest rates; 2) provided cash "gifts" to home purchasers through certain charities, so purchasers could come up with minimum required down payments, with assurances the "gifts" would not have to be repaid, and then increased home purchase prices to offset the amount of the gifts; 3) obscured which of its branches made defaulting mortgage loans to avoid FHA detection of excessive default rates, and; 4) ignored "stated income" requirements in making loans to unqualified purchasers.

As a consequence, unqualified home buyers were induced to enter into FHA insured mortgages, interest rates for and the amount of FHA insured mortgages were improperly inflated, and Beazer Mortgage branches involved in fraudulent activity were hidden from the FHA. In some instances, mortgages that resulted from these fraudulent activities defaulted. When they did so, holders of the loans made FHA mortgage insurance claims and the FHA was wrongfully required to pay inflated claims, and to pay for the management, maintenance, rehabilitation and marketing of defaulted properties. 

A settlement has been reached in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against Verizon Communications Inc who is accused of overcharging the General Services Administration (GSA) on invoices dealing with government-wide voice and data telecommunications services contracts.

The whistleblowers portion of the government's recovery was not disclosed.

Originally filed in January 2007,  the United States alleged that Verizon subsidiary MCI Communications Services Inc. dba Verizon Business Services invoiced GSA for a variety of federal, state and local taxes and surcharges in violation of the contracts or applicable regulations in connection with the FTS2001 and FTS2001 Bridge contracts. The department’s joint investigation with GSA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that Verizon and MCI submitted false claims under the contracts for the reimbursement of property taxes, common carrier recovery charges and unallowable surcharges, charges that are not directly reimbursable under the FTS2001 contracts.