Gary L. Azorsky

Gary L. Azorsky, chair of the Whistleblower practice has spent much of his nearly four-decades-long career helping right wrongs, recovering nearly $8 billion in defrauded funds for federal and state governments and hundreds of millions of dollars for whistleblower clients. 

Gary primarily pursues claims on behalf of whistleblowers involving violations of the federal securities laws under the Whistleblower Program of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, violations of the federal tax laws under the Whistleblower Program of the Internal Revenue Service, and violations of the Commodities Exchange Act under the Whistleblower Program of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He also pursues cases under the federal and state False Claims Act statutes in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, banking, and defense contracting sectors. 

Recognized for his vast experience and knowledge of the False Claims Act, Gary has testified before the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee for the advancement of a Vermont State False Claims Act and provided expert guidance on the False Claims Act for the Joint Hearing of the U.S. House Oversight and Judiciary Committees Concerning Perez Actions with respect to the St. Paul qui tam cases. He has been qualified by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to testify as an expert in False Claims Act practice in the matter of U.S. ex rel. Kieff v. Wyeth and has served as an expert in Pennsylvania state court litigation.  

Gary served as co-lead counsel in a qui tam action against the pharmaceutical company Wyeth in the District of Massachusetts, in which more states joined to intervene along with the government of the United States than had ever before intervened in a qui tam action. The $784.6 million settlement was the seventh-largest False Claims Act recovery on record and the second-largest recovery in history involving a single class of drugs. He worked alongside Department of Justice attorneys and state attorneys general throughout the 12-year pendency of the case. 

His body of work is extensive and includes precedent-setting cases such as the series of Ven-A-Care cases, which were among the first large FCA multi-state cases and laid the groundwork for much of the False Claims Act litigation that followed. Gary has also represented whistleblowers in FCA cases involving defense contractors, off-label marketing and misbranding by pharmaceutical companies, violations of the federal anti-kickback statute, property appraisal and banking fraud and fraud in connection with for-profit colleges and student loan programs.  

Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, he was actively involved in groundbreaking civil rights, commercial and intellectual property litigation, including Internet and software industry-related litigation.