Whistleblower Alleges Fraud At A Large Medicare Advantage Plan In Seattle

Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, one of the United States' oldest and most respected nonprofit health insurance plans, is accused of bilking Medicare out of millions of dollars in a federal whistleblower case.

Teresa Ross, a former medical billing manager at the insurer, alleges that it sought to reverse financial losses in 2010 by claiming that some patients were sicker than they were or by billing for medical conditions that patients didn't actually have. As a result, the insurer retroactively collected an estimated $8 million from Medicare for 2010 services, according to the suit. read more »

How the wheels came off Facebook's Libra project

Support for Mark Zuckerberg’s mission to reshape global finance is slipping away slowly but surely

When Facebook announced plans to launch a digital currency earlier this summer, it added a full-blown revolution in global finance to its typically vaulting Silicon Valley mission statement: to create a digital currency alongside its efforts to bring the world closer together through networks.

Over the past month, that mission has gone badly awry. The Libra cryptocurrency project now faces existential threats from world leaders and central bankers worried about its harmful potential: as a vehicle for money laundering, a threat to global financial stability, open to data privacy abuse, dangerous for consumers and stripping nations of the control of their economies by privatising the money supply. read more »

Netflix’s ‘The Laundromat’ Goes On as Court Transfers Lawsuit

Netflix on Friday released “The Laundromat,” a movie based on the Panama Papers, despite an attempt by two lawyers linked to the documents to stop the streaming premiere.

The movie, starring Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas and Meryl Streep, was released by the streaming platform after a limited showing in theaters.

The two lawyers, Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca, filed a lawsuit against Netflix in federal court in Connecticut on Tuesday, saying the movie defamed them and could prejudice criminal cases against them.

The Panama Papers were a trove of documents leaked from the two lawyers’ firm, Mossack Fonseca in Panama, in a data breach that shed light on how the rich hide their money. read more »

Boeing may have ‘unknowingly’ misled regulators about crash-linked software

Boeing failed to turn over documents about MCAS program, linked to two fatal crashes of 737 Max airliners, to the FAA for four months

A senior Boeing executive has said he may have “unknowingly” misled US regulators about the software program linked to two fatal crashes of 737 Max airliners.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed on Friday that Boeing told it a day earlier about internal messages it had discovered “some months ago” that characterize “certain communications with the FAA during the original certification of the 737 Max in 2016”.

The FAA said it found the messages “concerning” and “is reviewing this information to determine what action is appropriate”. It prompted a letter from the FAA administrator, Steve Dickson, to Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, demanding an “immediate” explanation for the delay in turning over the documents. read more »