Government grants and loans are critical to promoting innovative research, and helping individuals pursue their dreams of graduating from college. To qualify for these funds, students and schools must satisfy certain requirements. Unfortunately, some institutions abuse the government’s trust by making fraudulent statements to the Department of Education in order to falsely meet these requirements.

Under the False Claims Act, the United States government can recover money and collect fines against schools who commit education fraud and exploit students. The qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act protect people who come forward to report education fraud from retaliation, and allow whistleblowers to receive a portion of any amount the government recovers from the wrongdoer.

Education fraud that can give rise to a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act includes, but is not limited to, practices such as:

• deceptive recruiting tactics
• compensating employees for securing student enrollments
• falsifying records and reports
• misrepresenting accreditation information
• misrepresenting data
• falsifying research results

Our firm can help you enforce your rights and recover money under the False Claims Act in cases involving education fraud.

We work these kinds of cases under contingent fee arrangements, which means you owe us nothing unless we are able to recover money for you.

To learn more about your rights, we encourage you to review our Whistleblower Rights FAQ page, and to speak with one of our attorneys. You can call us at 612.486.5540, or use our contact form to request a free case evaluation. Your privacy is important to us, and we promise to treat any information we receive as strictly confidential.

 

Illustrative Case

University of Phoenix, a for-profit institution, accepted federal student financial aid while in violation of laws prohibiting post-secondary schools from paying admissions employees compensation tied to the number of students they recruited.

The whistleblowers, two former University of Phoenix employees, filed a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act against University of Phoenix for its fraudulent conduct. The government recovered $67.5 million from University of Phoenix, and the whistleblowers were rewarded $19 million for coming forward with information about the education fraud.

Click here to request a free case evaluation.