fraudulent gains

Companies found guilty have to pay as much as three times the amount of their fraudulent gains, and any person who files a suit is entitled to keep up to 30 percent of the money recovered.

The law rewards employees who reveal fraud against the federal government; guilty companies must repay the government three times their fraudulent gains, and the whistleblowers receive from 15 percent to 30 percent of the proceeds.

In 2003 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seized it, claiming he and another partner had purchased it with the proceeds from a Ponzi scheme in which they sold a thousand unsuspecting investors "prime bank notes" with a guaranteed 400% return, for a total of $56 million in fraudulent gains.