Opinion ID: 2681213
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: ipc

Text: In contrast to Green Bay, IPC “was already making containers for NCED” at the time Ahumada began working there. Id. at 258. According to the second amended complaint, these containers came from IPC’s San Antonio plant, rather than its El Paso plant, because the general manager of the El Paso plant “refused to go along with the illegal scheme of manufacturing boxes that were supposed to be made by disabled individuals.” Id. Thus, Ahumada asserts, IPC “unquestionably knew that NCED was participating in the JWOD program . . . and that NCED was not meeting the JWOD requirement.” Id. To be sure, this allegation comes closer than the previous ones to establishing Ahumada’s direct and independent knowledge. But it nevertheless falls short of the mark. To support his assertion that IPC “unquestionably knew” of NCED’s wrongdoing-- the scienter element of the FCA claim--Ahumada states that he 19 “was told that [IPC’s] General Manager . . . refused to go along with the illegal scheme.” Id. (emphasis added). But he does not state who told him this information--whether some third party or an employee of IPC itself. See United States v. N.Y. Med. Coll., 252 F.3d 118, 121 (2d Cir. 2001) (per curiam) (noting that a relator is not an original source if “a third party is the source of the core information on which the qui tam complaint is based” (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted)). He thus has not established that his knowledge was “direct,” rather than derived from an “intervening agency.” See Grayson, 221 F.3d at 583. Ahumada also alleges that IPC submitted to NCED eleven invoices for “226,701 complete GSA boxes” in September and October of 2004, after Ahumada informed an IPC representative of NCED’s fraudulent conduct. J.A. 258. These boxes, Ahumada alleges, “were stamped with NCED’s [box manufacturing certificate], falsely making it appear that the boxe[s] were manufactured by NCED in compliance with the JWOD . . . labor requirements.” Id. But Ahumada offers no basis on which he could have known such detailed information directly. In fact, because the invoices Ahumada cites were issued after he left NCED in July 2004, this information almost certainly derives from public disclosures or some other intervening agency. Cf. Rockwell Int’l, 549 U.S. at 475 (concluding that the relator did 20 not possess direct and independent knowledge “[b]ecause [he] was no longer employed by [the defendant]” at the time the alleged fraud occurred). Likely confirming as much, the same page of the second amended complaint explicitly cites testimony from the Lopez trial. In sum, because Ahumada has not established that his allegations against IPC are based on his direct and independent knowledge, he does not qualify as an original source.