Jeffrey Werkin's arrest in early February was a stunner. The former Justice Department attorney was accused of trying to sell a confidential lawsuit filed by a whistleblower to the company being targeted. He was arrested in a Silicon Valley hotel lobby where he was using a false name, wearing a wig, and carrying a seal, allegedly carrying a sealed complaint that he was planning to sell for three ten thousand dollars.
A new Bloomberg News story says FBI agents are now asking questions at the Justice Department, trying to determine how Wortkin got the complaint and whether he sold other secrets while working at the Department's Medicare fraud unit. Wortkin has yet to enter a plea, and his lawyer has declined to comment with us to talk about the case. David Stone, senior managing partner of the law firm Stone and Man,
I'm gonna mess this up. David Man man Ganini and Nola J. Hitchcock Cock Cross, managing attorney at the Cross Law Firm. I'm having less trouble pronouncing that. Welcome to you, both, David H. Let's start with you tell us why this complaint that work Can is accused of trying to sell was under seal in the first place. Well, Um, the False Claims Act, which is a federal statute, provides that private individuals who blow the whistle on fraud against the
government can bring cases on behalf of the government. But those cases must be filed under seal in order to give the government the opportunity to investigate the case and determine whether they want to proceed with the case or not. And the statute requires that the case be kept under seal for at least sixty days, although it can be extended for good cause, and often is extended for good cause. So, Nola, there's a lot of secrecy surrounding the Justice Department lawyers
investigating the whistle blower claims. Where could he have gotten the information besides from another colleague. Well, let me first say there's a couple of other reasons for the you and why it's very important and particularly also why it's important to relators, um, because when the relators file the complaint, UM, oftentimes are the people who are the whistleblowers right, sometimes called whistleblowers. Under the statutes, they're called relators. Yes, those
are the whistleblowers. And and very frequently the whistleblowers are current employees. So a very important reason for this seal process under the statue, which is highly unusual in any federal law, is is to protect the identity of the
whistleblowers themselves, of their laders exactly. And and and another reason which is extremely important to the government is UM that because of the first to file rule UM, when a whistleblower is filing such a complaint, they have no knowledge whether twenty other people have already filed, and in fact they will not be entitled to any UM share in
any recovery. And yet they, because of the seal process, they provide all of their information as a government, giving the government an opportunity to get multiple UM whistleblowers to provide information. UM. He had to the access to the complaints UM. The UM he was not a Department of Justice employee at the time of the alleged act UM he was until I believe April of two thousand sixteen, UM.
And there have been some reports that UM, you know, speculations that he may have taken UM other UM complaints that he was working on. UM. One question for the Department of Justice there would be whether there's a fire firewall and UM, what access there would be generally to to all of them that are filed. David, how did let's talk about the Jeffrey Working case in particular, how how did he come to the attention of UH, the
FBI and the first place. So what happened in this case is that jeff we war Getten, who was formerly a member of the Department of Justice and worked on these cases and therefore had access to these cases, but had left the Department and was now a partner in a in a well known law firm, UM private law firm, contacted an individual at one of the defendants UH that was a defendant under this False Claims Act case that was under seal, and offered to give them information about
the case, give them a copy of the sealed complaint which they wouldn't otherwise have access to. And that individual apparently contacted the FBI, and the FBI carried out a
sting operation. So, Nola, they're going to have to be reviewing his cases, and how will that affect his cases and the other cases in the office well, like I I indicated, there may need to be a review beyond what cases were signed to him, depending upon what firewall may have been in place and what access UM in the investigative UM attorney in the Department of Justice would have had. UM. You know, he may have had access
to a larger kind of play. But I do want to emphasize, though, and going over this, that this is such an aberration and so shocking to everyone because of the exceedingly high level of professionalism that we experience as related council with SIBIL or counsel um with the Department of Justice. David, do you do you agree with that? Have you seen anything like this before. I've never seen anything like this before, and there was you know, well,
I have disagreements about certain things. I mean, Jeffrey Workin was the key d o J lawyer on a number of cases I was involved in where the government did not intervene, and I didn't agree with those hittance. I never agree with those decisions, Um, But you know, I did hear from other people that you know, he was a very aggressive advocate for other cases. So it certainly came as a complete surprise that this happened. And I
would say this is an aberration. But what I would say about this case is that he left with at least one, apparently one seal complaint, which clearly is not legal, and the fact that he had at least one sealed
complaints suggests that maybe he had more than one. He is assigned as the key point person on a number of these false claims cases a year, and he also potentially has access to other False Claims Act complaints that are under sealed because because as Nolan mentioned, he has to determine whether there's a first to file issue that
he has to tell lawyers about. So he had access not only to his own complaints, but presumably to other ones, and certainly in terms of decisions where the government did not intervene in cases that he was involved in. If there's any inkling that he was doing this while he was at d o J, I think it's really important that those cases be you know, we examined to determine that those intervention decisions were made properly and that those
were leaders were treated properly. I want to thank our guest, David Stone of Stone and Manganini and Nola J. Hitchcock Hitchcock Cross of the Cross Law Firm, talking about the case of Jeffrey workin