Getting to Know Tony Munter Whistleblower Attorney (Part 1)

To help readers of the blog get to know Tony Munter, we interviewed him and asked him some questions about his practice, his passions, and his past experience. In addition to Tony’s insightful blog posts about whistleblower law, False Claims, and fraud, you’ll be seeing some of these one-on-one interviews with Mr. Munter, qui tam attorney.

What is your main practice area?

Tony Munter: Well, my area of practice involves any aspect of fraud generally committed against the United States government or in some cases state government and that triggers several different kinds of potential cases under various whistleblower laws.

What are some of the most common types of cases that you handle?

Tony Munter: The most common is the Federal False Claims Act which allows an individual to sue on behalf of the federal government and obtain a reward. There are also whistleblower reward laws as a result of the Dodd-Frank legislation with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as well as a major tax fraud provision of the IRS and there are state false claims acts.

What are past work or training has prepared you for your career in qui tam law?

Tony Munter: I have experience doing immigration law, which turned out to be very applicable to the work I do now. It was corporate immigration work and that experience was interesting because it forced me to learn a lot about the structure of businesses and how they are supposed to work and present them in the most positive light possible, but it also afforded me the chance to understand how they’re supposed to be structured and what they’re supposed to do and generally speaking under False Claims Act it’s the other side of the coin. We are trying to take information about what a company might’ve done that was harmful, but you still have to understand how a company worked, what their mission was, what they’re supposed to do, so you have to be able to understand the basic organization involved of a company.

So I know it might not seem like it, but it turned out that was really good training for doing this kind of work when I first started doing this ten years ago.

What do you enjoy most about whistleblower cases?

Tony Munter: Well, I enjoy a lot of things about it actually. I enjoy figuring out what the company did that was wrong and seeing if there’s a real basis to make a case. I enjoy working with my clients who usually are expert in their particular area or business and learning from them a lot of about the business that they’re involved in pursuing.

And because of all this, because the federal government is involved in so many different kinds of businesses, I find that almost every case is new and different and while I obviously try to bring my knowledge of the False Claims Act and relevant law to the case, I always enjoy learning about the particular industry that is the subject of a new case and that’s fascinating to me. I do enjoy that.