Bogus Claims Threaten to Taint Lejeune Payouts to Veterans

The government plan to pay billions of dollars to victims of toxic water at Camp Lejeune has unleashed a wave of fraudulent claims that threatens to disrupt or taint what could be one of the largest-ever mass tort cases.

Mikal Watts, whose Texas firm has 6,000 Camp Lejeune clients, said its internal auditors determined hundreds of referrals from other lawyers for Camp Lejuene and other cases were bogus, often based on doctored medical records and fictional reports of diseases or other sickness. Some of the would-be plaintiffs, he said, had been recruited through call centers based in India.