If you or your company receive any money from the government - whether you manufacture jets for the military or sell office supplies to the IRS - you can find yourself the subject of a “procurement fraud” investigation.

False Claims Act settlements and judgments in such cases have brought an average of well over $2 billion per year into the government’s coffers in recent years, with no break in sight. And the False Claims Act is just one of several weapons available in the government’s arsenal to combat procurement fraud. The stakes in these investigations are high -- not only because of the large dollar amounts at issue (e.g., damages up to three times the amount of the entire contract value), but also because of the possibility of criminal charges and suspension and debarment. Moreover, procurement fraud investigations are made more complex because of the possibility of parallel civil and criminal investigations, as well as by the mandatory disclosure rule.

Further complicating matters, it is often one of your employees who triggers the investigation in the hope that he or she can recover a large monetary bounty for doing so. If you do have a whistleblower and if he or she is still your employee, your options are constrained in a number of ways, including taking any actions that would be considered retaliatory.

This handbook, produced by Crowell & Moring, will provide you with an overview of some of the applicable laws and serve as a practical guide to help you with your initial response if you are ever investigated.