Buffalo Grove man gets $56.5 mil. for telling truth

WHISTLEBLOWER | His lawsuit revealed HMO defrauded feds


He's an unassuming 62-year-old who has lived a pretty regular life in suburban Buffalo Grove.

This week, though, Cleveland Tyson became a multimillionaire after a six-year odyssey that entailed blowing the whistle on a managed-care provider.


His reward -- $56.25 million -- is part of the largest judgment of its kind in the Chicago area.

"I hope that this result will encourage others who know about fraud against the government and come forward," Tyson said Thursday.

In 2002, Tyson filed a lawsuit against Amerigroup, revealing that the Medicaid provider, his former employer, was overcharging the government tens of millions of dollars by turning away pregnant women and unhealthy patients.

Tyson hired lawyers Fred Cohen and David Chizewer, of Chicago's Goldberg Kohn law firm, to help him prove that Amerigroup refused to insure the people the state paid it to insure. Later, the government joined the lawsuit and won big at trial.

The win came, in part, after Tyson provided key names of employees at Amerigroup who condoned the redlining of patients who cost too much to insure.

The problem was that Amerigroup was paid by state and federal authorities to insure anyone, no matter their ailment, federal prosecutors said.

In October 2006, the jury came back with a stunning verdict, saying the federal and state governments had been cheated out of $48 million. That amount was automatically tripled by law. Then, a judge added penalties, bringing the total judgment to $334 million.

Amerigroup appealed but dropped that effort recently. This week, it entered into a settlement that calls for paying out a total of $225 million. Amerigroup didn't admit any wrongdoing.

Tyson was eligible for 15 percent to 25 percent of the total settlement. He was given 25 percent, the maximum amount, because he was so crucial to the case, a federal prosecutor said.

Chizewer and Cohen said Tyson, who now works for the Department of Homeland Security, never asked what his cut would be.

"He wanted people to know that what he was saying was true," Cohen said.

That's awesome. In our current climate, especially involving insurance, I never expected to hear "whistleblower" and "reward" together.

Wait - the government was GETTING defrauded? According to John McCain, it's supposed to be the other way around. That's how he's going to balance the budget, right?

As far as Mr. Tyson, kudos to him. It takes a lot of guts to do what he did. So many people that try it get their lives ruined when they cannot afford to fight the "scorched earth" strategy employed by the adversary.

See!

There's always gonna be hope...

this made me crack a smile this morning...

YAY!!!! I am happy about this.

Well, I applaud his actions for sure.

But taking a cut of the penalty??? Somehow that doesn't seem right. I can only GUESS how much the lawyers got.