FCC OIG

DISH Wireless LLC agreed to pay over $17 million to resolve allegations that it made false claims against two FCC affordability programs designed to provide broadband services to low-income households during and immediately after the COVID-19 Pandemic.

An FCC OIG/DOJ joint investigation found that DISH and its agents enrolled tens of thousands of ineligible subscribers into two broadband subsidy programs intended to help low-income Americans access broadband services.

The government found evidence (1) DISH trained and directed sales agents to submit inaccurate customer applications, (2) DISH third-party sales agents submitted more than 80,000 applications with false or incomplete information to the FCC, and (3) DISH executives knew for months that it was improperly enrolling subscribers, failed to take corrective action, and DISH continued to request and receive money from the federal government.

We are grateful to our partners in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division, Jennifer Chorpening, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for their outstanding pursuit of this important case, and to our colleagues in FCC for their support and assistance.

Congratulations to FCC OIG Investigative Attorneys Eric Phelps, Regina Jansen, and Jeremiah Kirstein, for their excellent work on this investigation. We are also proud to recognize the critical contributions of Chris Howell-Little, Phinsuda Kiatchai, Will Sapp, and Joshua Cardenzana on our data analytics team, who conducted the innovative analytics work that identified the underlying fraud scheme and provided critical analytics support to the investigative team.

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DISH Wireless LLC to Pay More than $17M to Resolve False Claims Act and Administrative Allegations Related to FCC’s Broadband Benefits Programs DISH Wireless LLC (DISH), located in Englewood, Colorado, has agreed to pay $17,280,240 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act (FCA), common law, and the Communications Act of 1934 relating to claims to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Emergency Broadband Ben...

Last week, FCC OIG spent a morning with our future, and it is bright!

We had the honor of hosting an outstanding cohort of interns from Kent State University’s Washington Program in National Issues. We discussed OIG’s mission to combat fraud, waste & abuse, and shared insights into public service and career paths in federal oversight.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in our panel discussions and presentations!