Cuccinelli says he might be latest IRS target Cuccinelli said the $125 million is his office's approximate share of the second-largest Medicaid fraud settlement in U.S. history. Virginia's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which is part of his office, did 80 percent of the investigative work on the case, putting in more than 38,000 man hours, he said. Cuccinelli said he has been seeking the money for eight months. He said it should have been paid within weeks or a couple months after Abbott forfeited the money in October, following an investigation that found the pharmaceutical giant had promoted the drug, approved for epileptic seizures, migraines and mania, for the "off-label" purpose of sedating elderly nursing home patients. Cuccinelli, who successfully sued the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration over storm water regulations and was the first attorney general in the nation to file a lawsuit over "Obamacare," said the delay was the result of incompetence or political targeting. He said he was leaning toward the latter explanation, saying that the non-payment seemed to fit a pattern of the IRS giving higher scrutiny to the administration's political foes. IRS has acknowledged in recent weeks that it targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. "Needless to say, I've been on the other side of some issues from this administration," he said. At the same time, Cuccinelli said at a news conference in Richmond that his office had not directly contacted the IRS about the money. He said he has been working instead through the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Virginia. More recently, he said, he had enlisted the help of Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.). Cuccinelli said that the Treasury Department has told his office that the IRS is refusing to complete paperwork needed to provide the payment. "There's incompetence or there's malevolence," Cuccinelli said. The level of incompetence here is so astoundingly high that it does become hard to believe that even a federal agency like the IRS is capable of that level of incompetence. When asked about directly approaching the IRS, he said several times, "We don't have that option." When a reporter asked why he didn't just write a letter to the director of the IRS, Cuccinelli said, "Well, we know that the congressional reps have been talking to their office, and we thought that would be a more effective form of communication. And they have talked to them. But it has not moved the ball down the field at all. Officials with the IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.