Whistleblower Settlement News: Biggest Payouts and SEC Awards

Federal whistleblower settlements and judgments reached a historic peak in fiscal year 2025, with the Department of Justice recovering more than $6.8 billion under the False Claims Act — the largest annual total since the statute was modernized in 1986.{} More than $5.3 billion of that came from cases first filed by private citizens under the qui tam provisions, which let individuals sue on the government’s behalf and collect a share of what the government wins back.{} Whistleblowers filed 1,297 new qui tam suits during the year, well past the prior record of 980 set in 2024.{¹}

Here are the largest cases and payouts.

The Biggest Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Settlements

Healthcare fraud produced more than $5.7 billion of the FCA total, with cases involving Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE.{²}

Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen — $1.64 Billion

In March 2025, U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi upheld a jury verdict and ordered Janssen Products LP, now known as Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, to pay roughly $1.64 billion: $1.28 billion in penalties plus $360 million in treble damages.{} Two former Janssen sales representatives, Jessica Penelow and Christine Brancaccio, filed the underlying qui tam suit back in 2012, alleging that the company unlawfully promoted the HIV drugs Prezista and Intelence and caused false claims to federal health programs.{} Janssen is appealing to the Third Circuit, arguing that the penalty is excessive under the Eighth Amendment and that the FCA’s qui tam mechanism itself is unconstitutional under Article II.{³}

CVS’s Omnicare — $948.8 Million

In July 2025, a federal judge in Manhattan ordered CVS subsidiary Omnicare to pay $948.8 million after a jury found the company liable for more than 3.3 million false claims.{⁴} Former Omnicare pharmacist Donald Gale filed the qui tam lawsuit in 2015, and the DOJ joined it in 2019. Prosecutors alleged that between 2010 and 2018, Omnicare dispensed drugs to elderly and disabled patients in long-term care and assisted living facilities without valid prescriptions, then billed Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE.{⁵} The judgment reflects treble damages applied to a jury finding of $135.6 million in federal losses, plus penalties. CVS has said it plans to appeal.{}

Teva Pharmaceuticals — $450 Million

In October 2024, Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $450 million to resolve two sets of allegations. The first involved a scheme from 2006 to 2017 in which Teva allegedly funneled money through third-party copay assistance foundations to cover Medicare copayments for patients taking its multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone while repeatedly raising the drug’s price. The second involved price-fixing with other generic manufacturers for pravastatin, clotrimazole, and tobramycin. Teva had already paid a $225 million criminal penalty and entered a deferred prosecution agreement on the price-fixing side.{⁶}

Walgreens — Up to $350 Million

On April 21, 2025, Walgreens agreed to pay up to $350 million to settle allegations that from 2012 through 2023 it knowingly filled millions of unlawful controlled substance prescriptions — opioids in excessive quantities, early refills, and the dangerous “trinity” combination — and billed Medicare and other federal programs for them. The DOJ alleged Walgreens pressured pharmacists to fill prescriptions quickly without proper verification and withheld internal data on problematic prescribers.{} The settlement resolved four qui tam lawsuits filed by former Walgreens employees between 2019 and 2023. Whistleblowers took home 17.25% of the FCA recovery, totaling more than $25 million. Walgreens also entered a seven-year compliance agreement with the DEA and a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement with the HHS Office of Inspector General.{⁷}

Gilead Sciences — $202 Million

Gilead Sciences settled with the DOJ for $202 million in April 2025. The government alleged that between 2011 and 2017, Gilead paid high-volume prescribers hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaker fees, funded dinners at high-end restaurants, and covered travel to destinations like Hawaii and Miami to induce prescriptions for six HIV drugs including Biktarvy and Descovy. Physician and HIV specialist Dr. Paul Bellman filed the qui tam case in 2016.{⁸}

Raytheon’s $950 Million Global Settlement

The largest defense-related recovery was a $950 million global settlement with RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation, announced in October 2024. It resolved criminal and civil investigations spanning foreign bribery, export control violations, and defective pricing of military contracts.{⁹}

The FCA portion, worth $428 million, alleged that Raytheon submitted false cost and pricing data during negotiations for Patriot missile systems and radar maintenance contracts between 2009 and 2020, producing more than $111 million in overcharges to the Department of Defense. The company admitted failing to disclose accurate labor and material costs and to double-billing on a weapons maintenance contract. Former employee Karen Atesoglu filed the qui tam suit and will receive $4.2 million as her share. The criminal side addressed bribery of a Qatari military official between 2012 and 2016; Raytheon entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement and paid $252.3 million in criminal penalties, $36.6 million in forfeiture, and $124 million to the SEC for related securities violations.{⁹}

Cybersecurity Fraud: A Fast-Growing Category

Government contractors who misrepresent compliance with cybersecurity standards are a newer target. In fiscal year 2025, the DOJ’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative produced eight settlements, five of them whistleblower-initiated. Total whistleblower payouts from cybersecurity cases reached roughly $4.5 million, a 68% jump from 2024.{¹⁰}

Medical device maker Illumina Inc. paid $9.8 million over allegations that it failed to incorporate adequate cybersecurity into its software and falsely certified compliance with industry standards. No data breach had occurred.
Raytheon and Nightwing Group paid $8.4 million after a whistleblower alleged they failed to meet Department of Defense cybersecurity requirements for their information systems.
MorseCorp Inc. paid $4.6 million over allegations that it submitted false cybersecurity compliance scores and used non-compliant cloud services on defense contracts.

The MorseCorp case was described as the first major FCA settlement with a defense contractor specifically over cybersecurity controls, and the broader pattern is DOJ using the False Claims Act to reach contractors who misrepresent their cybersecurity posture even without a breach.

The Record Retaliation Payout: SunEdison

Separate from the FCA fraud recoveries, March 2025 brought what has been described as the largest documented settlement for a whistleblower retaliation claim under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Carlos Domenech Zornoza, former president and CEO of SunEdison subsidiaries TerraForm Power and TerraForm Global, reached a $34.5 million settlement after a nearly decade-long legal battle.{¹¹}

Domenech alleged he was fired in November 2015 after telling SunEdison’s board that the company’s CEO and CFO were misrepresenting its liquidity and financial condition. He filed a Department of Labor complaint in 2016 and sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in 2018. After a two-week bench trial, Judge Paula Xinis ruled in January 2025 that TerraForm Power and TerraForm Global had violated SOX. The $34.5 million settlement came on the eve of the damages phase.{¹¹}

SEC, IRS, and CFTC Awards

Not every whistleblower payout comes through the False Claims Act. Three other federal programs produce their own awards, and the picture across them is uneven.

The SEC pulled back sharply in fiscal 2025, awarding more than $60 million to 48 whistleblowers — a steep drop from $255 million in FY 2024.{} The agency still received roughly 27,000 tips, an 8% increase, and made 82 preliminary determinations recommending awards, with a pipeline of probable future awards estimated between $218 million and $654 million. The decline was attributed in part to a 17% staffing reduction at the whistleblower office and shifting enforcement priorities, and the SEC reduced eight awards for “unreasonable delay” in reporting, compared to three the prior year.{} Since 2010, the SEC program has awarded nearly $2 billion to roughly 400 whistleblowers.{¹²}

On the tax side, the IRS recently recovered $263 million in a tax fraud settlement involving three whistleblowers who collectively received a 30% award — the statutory maximum — for a net payout of about $74 million after the mandatory 5.7% sequestration reduction.{¹³} Since 2007, the IRS has collected more than $7 billion based on whistleblower information and paid over $1.3 billion in awards.{¹⁴}

The CFTC set records of its own in FY 2024, issuing 12 awards totaling more than $42 million. The program received 1,744 tips that year, with cryptocurrency fraud at the top of the list. Since 2014, the CFTC program has paid approximately $395 million across 73 awards in 56 matters, tied to enforcement actions that produced over $3.3 billion in financial remedies.{¹⁵}{¹⁶}

New Programs Starting to Pay Out

Two newer programs are now part of the picture. On January 29, 2026, the DOJ Antitrust Division and the U.S. Postal Service announced the first-ever $1 million whistleblower reward under the Antitrust Whistleblower Rewards Program, which had been running for only six months. The case involved EBLOCK Corporation, which operates an online auction platform for used vehicles; employees of a company EBLOCK acquired in 2020 had rigged bids and placed fake “shill bids” to inflate prices in a $16 million scheme running from November 2020 to February 2022. EBLOCK entered a deferred prosecution agreement and paid a $3.28 million criminal fine.{¹⁷}

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is also standing up a formal anti-money laundering whistleblower program. A proposed rule published April 1, 2026 would cover violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and related statutes, paying awards of 10% to 30% of monetary sanctions collected in enforcement actions exceeding $1 million. Funding would come from a revolving fund financed by penalties rather than congressional appropriations.{¹⁸}

What Whistleblowers Actually Take Home

Under the False Claims Act, successful whistleblowers receive between 15% and 30% of the government’s recovery, with the share depending on how significant their contribution was and whether the government intervened.{¹} Since 2010, FCA whistleblowers have been paid an average of roughly $432 million per year.{¹⁹} The SEC and CFTC programs use a 10% to 30% range. IRS whistleblowers are eligible for 15% to 30% of collected proceeds, but only in cases where the disputed tax exceeds $2 million and the taxpayer’s gross income tops $200,000.{¹⁴}

The dollars can be large; the waits are long. The IRS whistleblower office reports an average 11-year wait for payments.{¹³} The CFTC’s average processing time from claim to final order currently exceeds two and a half years.{¹⁶} Domenech’s SOX retaliation case took almost ten years from his firing to his settlement. The Janssen case took thirteen years from filing to judgment, and the judgment is still on appeal.

A Constitutional Cloud Over Qui Tam

One pending issue could reshape every FCA number above. In United States ex rel. Zafirov v. Florida Medical Associates, a federal district judge in Florida dismissed a whistleblower suit after ruling that the FCA’s qui tam provision violates the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, on the theory that private relators function as “Officers of the United States” without being appointed as such.{²⁰} Both the whistleblower and the United States have appealed to the Eleventh Circuit. The Janssen appeal in the Third Circuit raises the same Article II argument, so two appellate courts could soon issue conflicting rulings that push the question to the Supreme Court.{³} A ruling that qui tam is unconstitutional would undercut the mechanism responsible for the majority of the recoveries described here.

1
U.S. Department of Justice. False Claims Act Settlements and Judgments Exceed $6.8B in Fiscal Year 2025
2
Healthcare Dive. Justice Department Recovered Record $5.7 Billion in Healthcare False Claims
3
Bloomberg Law. J&J Unit to Fight Historic $1.6 Billion False Claims Act Award
4
Becker’s Hospital Review. CVS Omnicare Hit With $949M Judgement in False Claims Case
5
Healthcare Dive. CVS Omnicare $949 Million Government Fraud Penalty
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U.S. Department of Justice. Drug Maker Teva Pharmaceuticals Agrees to Pay $450M in False Claims Act Settlement
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U.S. Department of Justice. Walgreens Agrees to Pay $350M for Illegally Filling Unlawful Opioid Prescriptions
8
U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. Attorney Announces $202 Million Settlement With Gilead Sciences
9
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Raytheon Company to Pay Over $950M in Connection With Foreign Bribery, Export Control, and Government Contract Fraud
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Healthcare Dive. DOJ Cyber-Fraud Settlements Surge 233% in 2025
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PR Newswire. Hinckley Allen Secures $34.5 Million Settlement for Client in SOX Whistleblower Case
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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Whistleblower Program
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Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting. Whistleblower Attorneys Announce Historic Tax Fraud Recovery
14
IRS. Whistleblower Office
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CFTC. CFTC Whistleblower Award
16
Federal Register. Whistleblower Award Determination
17
U.S. Department of Justice. Antitrust Division and U.S. Postal Service Award First-Ever $1M Payment to Whistleblower
18
Federal Register. Whistleblower Incentives and Protections
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FalseClaimsAct.com. Whistleblower Statistics
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The Constitutional Accountability Center. United States ex rel. Zafirov v. Florida Medical Associates