Most people have never heard of the False Claims Act—even though it may be the government’s most powerful tool for deterring and recovering money lost to fraud. Every year, the law returns billions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury that would otherwise vanish into overbilled Medicare claims, inflated defense contracts, and other schemes designed to steal from taxpayers.

Here’s the basic idea: when someone defrauds a government program—say, a hospital billing Medicare for procedures that were never performed, or a defense contractor charging the military for equipment it never delivered—the government often can’t detect it on its own. The False Claims Act empowers private citizens with inside knowledge to sue the fraudster on the government’s behalf. Those cases are called qui tam lawsuits (from the Latin phrase meaning “he who sues for the king as well as himself”). The person who files such a suit is known as a relator—the legal term for a whistleblower acting as a private enforcement partner with the government.

If the lawsuit succeeds, the wrongdoer typically owes three times the actual damages caused, plus additional civil penalties per false claim submitted, and must pay the relator’s attorney fees. The relator receives between 15 and 30 percent of whatever is recovered—a meaningful reward that also helps offset the enormous personal and financial risks of coming forward.

B. Nathaniel Garrett, co-managing partner at Helmer Martins Tate & Garrett Co., LPA in Cincinnati, has built his entire practice around qui tam cases. A first-generation college student who found his way to law through military service, Garrett represents whistleblowers in qui tam cases that can span nearly two decades. We asked him about the statute’s Civil War roots, what it actually takes to bring a case, and why a small firm in Cincinnati can go toe-to-toe with the biggest defense firms in the country.

1. How did you find your way into the False Claims Act, qui tam cases, and this lesser-known corner of the law?

I first encountered it as a law student working on a research project at a local defense contractor. I was still in school, and something about the statute just fascinated me—it was so different from anything I’d been learning. I knew I was going to be on the law review, so I was looking for a topic and thought, “I’m going to write about this.”

The Civil War connection was a big part of the draw. Both of my grandfathers served in the military. My father served in the Air Force. I always had that patriotic sense, and the False Claims Act grew out of exactly that—defense contractors were defrauding the Union Army, and the government didn’t yet have an established Department of Justice to deter them. Congress needed the public’s help to enforce the laws. They created a mechanism for private citizens to step in: file a case on the government’s behalf and share in the recovery if they win.

Then in 1986, when Congress significantly strengthened the statute—adding teeth to the anti-retaliation protections, imposing treble damages and mandatory civil penalties, and increasing the relator’s share of the recovery—it was again driven by defense procurement fraud. That military thread ran right through the history of the law and right through my own background. It wasn’t a coincidence that it stuck.

2. Walk us through how a qui tam case works—and how you decide whether to take one.

The mechanics are unusual. When a whistleblower believes they’ve uncovered fraud against a government program, their attorney files a complaint under seal—meaning it’s kept confidential, and the defendant has no idea a case has been filed. That seal gives the Department of Justice time to investigate the allegations, which can take months or, in many cases, years.

After the investigation, the government decides whether to intervene—meaning it formally joins the case and takes the lead on litigation. That happens in roughly 20 to 25 percent of cases. When the government intervenes, it brings significant resources and credibility, and cases often move toward settlement sooner. When it declines, the whistleblower has the right to proceed independently—and that’s where firms like ours come in. We’re prepared to litigate declined cases, and we’ve built a reputation for it.

As for how we evaluate cases, it’s an art and a science. My partner James Tate and I talk with every potential whistleblower and make a quick assessment: is there something here worth investigating? If so, we agree to represent them in that investigation, and if we find a viable claim, we recommend filing.

There’s a real tension built into this. The False Claims Act has a first-to-file provision: if you’re not the first whistleblower to file your case, you can be barred from bringing it. So you need to move quickly—but you also want to file a complaint that’s thorough enough to get the government interested and satisfy the procedural requirement of pleading fraud with specificity. That’s a tighter window than most civil litigation.

We pass on many cases where I genuinely believe fraud is occurring. The whistleblower might not have access to the billing records—and without evidence of the actual false claims submitted, you don’t have a viable case. Or the scheme might be limited to one office rather than a nationwide operation. Or the scale just doesn’t justify years of contingency litigation. I tell people: I don’t doubt that you’re right. It’s just not a case we can bring. That’s not easy to say. But being selective is how we protect our clients and ourselves.

3. These cases take five to seven years on average—sometimes nearly twenty. How do you sustain that pace, financially and personally?

It is a very unusual practice area. It’s not for the faint of heart. We operate on a contingency fee model, which means we don’t bill by the hour—we get paid only when a case resolves successfully. That means we can go years without revenue. Not many businesses in America can say that. There are many easier ways to be financially successful as a lawyer.

Part of what makes this work at all is keeping the docket intentionally small. We take on fewer cases than a high-volume firm would, which lets us devote serious resources to each one. When a case is under seal and the government is still investigating, there are stretches where there’s almost nothing for us to do publicly—but we’re still thinking about it constantly, looking for ways to move it forward.

What I’ve come back to is the military discipline of touching every case every week, even when nothing is moving. James and I have a standing meeting where we go through every active matter and ask: what can we do right now to advance this? Sometimes the answer is nothing. But you’re always on it.

And then when a case resolves—after five years, or ten, or nearly twenty—there’s just this immense relief. You know what’s at stake for the whistleblower. You know what they risked coming forward. You know how long they waited. Getting to the finish line with them is unlike anything else in practice.

4. There’s a live constitutional challenge to the False Claims Act right now. What’s actually at stake?

It’s genuinely existential. A few years ago, in a case called United States ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, Inc., Justice Thomas wrote a dissent flagging a serious question: do qui tam relators—private citizens suing on behalf of the government—violate Article II of the Constitution?

The argument goes like this. Article II says the executive branch is responsible for enforcing the laws. The False Claims Act lets private individuals file suit and drive litigation on the government’s behalf—which looks a lot like a law enforcement function. The Constitution also requires that anyone performing such a function be formally appointed through established channels. Relators aren’t appointed. So, the question becomes: is the qui tam mechanism itself unconstitutional?

Since Justice Thomas raised the issue, defense attorneys in every False Claims Act case nationwide have advanced the same argument. That argument has failed everywhere, except for one outlier where a district court judge in Florida recently agreed and dismissed a case on those grounds. We’re waiting on the Eleventh Circuit’s decision. If that court rules the statute unconstitutional, the case goes to the Supreme Court—and given that multiple justices have already signaled interest, this is very much a live threat.

The Department of Justice has taken the position that there’s no violation—that relators aren’t operating as permanent government officers in the constitutional sense, and that the qui tam structure falls well within Congress’s power to design enforcement mechanisms. I think the government is absolutely right. But the law is a human institution. It’s shaped by politics, by history, by our present understanding of what the Constitution means.

The False Claims Act nearly disappeared once before. In the 1940s, Congress amended it into dormancy—it was so restricted that almost no one used it. The 1986 amendments brought it back and gave it real teeth. Although I am confident that the statute is constitutional, what happens next isn’t certain. But what is certain is that if the statute falls, billions of dollars in fraud goes unrecovered every year, and one of the few government programs that actually returns money to the Treasury disappears.

5. What would you tell a law student who wants to understand what this work actually demands of a person?

I came up as a first-generation college student from the west side of Cincinnati. My dad told me not to go to law school. He said I couldn’t pay for it. He said the same thing about college. I got a scholarship and figured it out. That background, that drive to keep advancing, shaped everything about how I approach this work.

The military reinforced it. The JAG Corps threw me into the courtroom on day one—I was third chair on a case my very first day back at my duty assignment after JAG school. You didn’t have time to think about whether you were ready. And you leave every courtroom thinking about what you could have done better. That’s not self-doubt. That’s growth. That mentality carries directly into this practice, where you might spend years on a case before you see the inside of a courtroom, and when you do, the stakes are enormous.

What I’d tell a law student now is to be careful with AI. Not because it isn’t useful—it absolutely is, especially for document review and for analyzing claims data to detect fraud patterns. But in school, you’re not writing briefs to solve world problems. You’re writing them to build the mental muscle of thinking and writing like a lawyer. If you skip that process and go straight to the output, you’re cheating yourself out of the foundation you’ll need for the next thirty years. Build the muscle first. The tools will still be there.

And go into the law because it matters. Representing whistleblowers is a privilege. These are people who saw something wrong and, instead of going along, pushed back—often at enormous personal cost, sometimes after losing a job, and sometimes after years of retaliation. The law gave them a mechanism to fight back. That mechanism needs good lawyers to work. We need good people to become those lawyers.

B. Nathaniel Garrett is co-managing partner at Helmer Martins Tate & Garrett Co., LPA in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he focuses on False Claims Act and whistleblower litigation. Learn more at fcalawfirm.com.