The Department of Justice announced Friday that it obtained more than $6.8 billion in False Claims Act (FCA) settlements and judgments in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025 (FY 2025). This is the largest total in a single year in FCA history, easily surpassing the $6.1 billion obtained in 2014.
Both recoveries and the number of new cases filed were up in FY 2025. Continuing the trend from the last several years, relators filed more qui tam cases than ever before. The 1,297 relator-filed cases surpassed last year’s high-water mark by over 300 cases. The Department of Justice also continued its recent trend of opening more affirmative matters without Relator involvement. It initiated 401 new FCA matters in 2025 — its third highest number of cases ever.
The DOJ reported that “over $5.7 billion related to matters that involved the health care industry,” specifically focusing on three areas: managed care, prescription drugs, and medically unnecessary care. The DOJ also focused on fraud matters involving the government’s purchase of goods and services, tariff and customs duties, cybersecurity requirements, and fraud in pandemic programs. The increased recovery in healthcare cases seems to result at least partially from large jury verdicts, including $1.6 million in a pharmaceutical case and $948.8 million in a pharmacy case.
Curiously, though, while FY 2025 involved the highest number of qui tam cases filed and the largest recoveries the department has seen, relator share awards went down. Total settlements and judgments were up 119% in 2025, yet relator share awards dropped by 31%. In FY 2025, relators received the second lowest amount of relator share awards since 2009. They received a total of only $330 million, while there were over $5.3 billion in recoveries attributed to qui tam cases, meaning relators received an average of 6% of the total recoveries. This figure is curious given that the FCA statutorily provides for relators to receive between 15% and 30% of the total recovery.
It is unclear why relators’ recoveries dipped in FY 2025. It might signal a higher proportion of settlements and judgments were not attributable to relators’ original claims or that the amount of the relators share in some of the reported matters has not yet been finalized. It is particularly interesting because, in the healthcare industry specifically, relators had notable success in proceeding without government intervention. FY 2025 was only the second time in history where relators in qui tam actions recovered more in cases where the government declined to intervene ($2.27 billion) than where the government intervened ($2.23 billion), with this only occurring previously in healthcare cases in 2022.