Duke University Pays $112 Million to Settle Federal Grant Fraud Case

Resolving a five-year-old case exposed by an academic whistleblower, the private Duke University agreed to pay the federal government $112.5 million to settle a charge that a researchers submitted falsified or fabricated data, the Justice Department announced on Monday. The whistleblower will receive $33,750,000 of the funds. Under 30 grants from 2006-2018 awarded by the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, a Duke lab technician doing experiments on the lung functions of mice “submitted applications and progress reports that contained falsified research,” Justice said. Duke discovered the misconduct in 2013 in its Airway Physiology Laboratory after the technician was fired for embezzling from the university. A lawsuit was filed by Joseph Thomas, a former Duke employee, under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act.