Not every troubling fact is a False Claims Act case. The first job is honest evaluation — not promising a lawsuit. Here is how that evaluation works, and what it takes to pass it.
The False Claims Act is a precise statute. It does not reach every instance of government contractor misconduct, every regulatory violation, or every situation where a company behaved badly and federal money was involved. A regulatory violation is not automatically an FCA violation. A contract dispute is not fraud. Shoddy work is not necessarily a false claim. The distinction matters — because filing a case that cannot survive legal scrutiny does not help the relator. It costs them years.
This practice is built around an evaluation methodology designed to answer that question honestly before a complaint is ever filed. Not every case that passes screening is filed. Not every situation that sounds like fraud meets the legal standard. The first job is accurate diagnosis — not promising a lawsuit.
That honesty is not a constraint on this practice. It is the foundation of it. A selective practice that declines cases forthrightly is more trustworthy — and ultimately more effective — than one that files everything and hopes the government carries the weight.
Every other factor — the size of the fraud, the type of government program, the relator's position — matters only after these two questions are answered honestly. The framework is simple. Applying it rigorously takes experience on both sides of it.
Can we identify a specific misrepresentation — an express false statement, a false implied certification, or a fraudulent scheme — that caused the government to pay money it would not have paid if it had known the truth? This is not a question about whether something wrong happened. It is a question about whether what happened fits within what the False Claims Act actually prohibits.
The answer is not always obvious. Regulatory violations do not automatically create FCA liability. Breach of contract is not fraud. Understanding the line between them — and where courts have drawn it over the last decade — is the first filter every case must pass.
The government receives thousands of qui tam complaints. It intervenes in a fraction of them. What drives that decision is not whether the relator believes fraud occurred — it is whether the evidence is strong enough to make investigation worth federal resources, and whether the case is significant enough to justify DOJ's attention.
This is where having spent time on the other side matters most. The evaluation is not just legal analysis — it is an honest projection of how DOJ will look at what you have. That perspective shapes everything from the disclosure statement to the case theory to the decision whether to file at all.
Most FCA attorneys have spent their careers exclusively as plaintiff's lawyers. Rob has also evaluated these exact case types as a federal prosecutor and litigated them from the defense side. Each perspective exposes different risks — and different strengths — that a single vantage point misses.
Having represented plaintiffs in fraud and employment matters for years, Rob has watched cases fall apart at deposition, at summary judgment, and in front of juries — often because the theory was compelling but the evidence wasn't. That experience gives his evaluations a realistic anchor: not whether fraud was real, but whether it can be proven through the demanding standards of federal court.
Evaluating a case from this vantage point means looking for the strongest possible theory — and being honest when the strongest available theory still isn't strong enough to recommend filing.
As an AUSA in the District of Oregon, Rob reviewed FCA disclosure statements and evaluated whether DOJ should commit investigative resources to specific matters. He knows what federal investigators find credible, what they find thin, and what evidence makes them move faster. He also knows what language in a disclosure statement raises skepticism rather than interest.
Structuring a qui tam filing to attract DOJ attention is a skill most relators' attorneys learn by trial and error. Rob learned it from the inside — evaluating those very filings from the other side of the table.
Rob has litigated on the defense side of employment and civil matters. He knows the arguments that get cases dismissed, the discovery strategies that exhaust relators, and the legal theories defendants use to challenge FCA claims at the pleading stage and beyond. That knowledge does not make him less aggressive. It makes him harder to surprise.
Every case evaluated here is stress-tested against the strongest arguments the other side is likely to raise. Cases that cannot survive that test are identified before they are filed — not after.
More on Rob's background: Three vantage points, one practice →
DOJ evaluates disclosure statements through a practical lens: Is this credible? Is this significant? Is this worth our time and resources? The cases that receive serious attention share predictable characteristics — and cases that lack them rarely attract intervention.
Emails, billing records, internal reports, lab certifications, contract deliverables, or cost reports that show the gap between what was represented to the government and what was actually done. The relator does not need everything — but the narrative needs to be anchored in something the government can independently verify.
One false claim is a data point. A systematic pattern across billing cycles, facilities, contract periods, or deliverables is a case. DOJ looks for evidence of knowing, repeated conduct — not isolated incidents that a defendant can credibly attribute to error or misunderstanding.
The government must have paid, or been at risk of paying, based on the false claim. Medicare and Medicaid billing, defense and civilian federal contracts, and federal grants all create clear nexuses. The connection between the misrepresentation and the federal payment needs to be direct — not attenuated through layers of subcontracts or state intermediaries.
DOJ prioritizes cases where the potential recovery justifies investigation costs. There is no rigid dollar floor, but cases where the fraud pattern can be extrapolated across the fraud period — healthcare billing across thousands of claims, defense contractor overcharges across a multi-year contract — command the most serious attention.
The relator's firsthand access matters. Someone who worked in billing, compliance, contract management, or direct patient care has direct knowledge of what happened. A relator who learned about fraud secondhand or through inference is harder for DOJ to build a case around. Credibility and positioning are part of every evaluation.
If another relator has already filed covering the same conduct, or if the fraud has been publicly disclosed through audits, litigation, or press coverage, the case may be barred before any merits analysis begins. These are threshold issues — they are evaluated first, because they determine whether everything else matters.
Most attorneys evaluate cases based on whether a theory sounds plausible. Rob evaluates them based on whether they can survive the disclosure statement review, withstand DOJ scrutiny, and hold up through the demands of federal litigation. That standard produces more declinations — and better outcomes for the cases that do move forward.
Every relator deserves to know — before they file — what the realistic path looks like. What DOJ is likely to do with the disclosure. What the defense will argue. How long it will take. What the case looks like if the government doesn't intervene. That assessment is not incidental to evaluation. It is the evaluation.