A billing consultant has sought whistleblower status in a case against AT&T, Verizon and Sprint regarding misappropriated phone taxes.

The whistleblower lawsuit was filed by a private auditor who was working for the government, performing rate analysis and billing audits. He believes he found widespread fraud of the phone companies overcharging the government for telephone service.

Interestingly, AT&T has not refuted the charges as much as it has attacked the consultant’s whistleblower status.

AT&T says that because the consultant is not a direct employee of AT&T, he is not an insider as dictated by the federal False Claims Act.

However, the law does not state that the whistleblower must be an employee or a former employee of the company in order to maintain whistleblower status. It is most common for such people to become whistleblowers, though, because of their proximity to the inner workings of the business where they were employed.

The auditing consultant had particularly unusual access to insider information because his job was to look at the phone taxes and billing procedures with a fine-toothed comb.

Emergency 911 Systems Underfunded

Two Georgia counties have filed lawsuits against several phone companies for under-billing customers for emergency 911 fees. The counties allege that companies became so competitive that they illegally cut the 911 fees that customers pay to help fund emergency services.

This cheats local governments out of the funds needed to properly care for the community through 911 dispatch services.

In addition, the Georgia counties accuse the phone companies of keeping hush on the percentage of the fees kept in their own coffers before distributing the remaining money to the counties.

Among the defendants in that case are BellSouth Telecommunications, Verizon Enterprise Solutions and Earthlink, among others.

Consumers are used to seeing a variety of phone taxes and surcharges on their bills, but it can be difficult to determine when you are being overcharged. Among the phone taxes that are possibly partially kept by the phone companies are:

• Universal Service Fund Fee
• Emergency 911 Surcharge
• State Taxes
• State Telecommunications Excise Surcharge
• Regulatory Charge
• Administrative Charge
• City Taxes & Fees
• Gross Receipts Surcharge
• Local Connectivity Charge
• Federal Subscriber Line Charge

Phone Taxes Case Not Isolated Incident

The consultant in the whistleblower lawsuit says the problem of misappropriated funds is widespread, affecting hundreds of government agencies and the communities they serve.

If you are a telecommunications company employee or have access to insider information, you can file a whistleblower lawsuit under the False Claims Act. Current or former employees have the most access to observing practices that might be illegal. Everyone from sales representatives to IT specialists could be aware of billing processes.

If you come forward with information the government can use, you could collect from 15 to 30 percent of the amount collected by the government. Whistleblower awards totaled more than $519 million in 2016 alone.