BP sets up '1-855-NO-2-FRAUD' hotline offering to pay people for reporting fraudulent Gulf compensation claims The April 2010 explosion on board the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 men and spilt millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. BP initially sought to compensate businesses that were affected via a $20bn trust fund, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility. But some businesses refused to engage with the process or were unhappy with the awards the GCCF made and sought to sue BP in court as part of the civil trial. The settlement with those plaintiffs was struck on the eve of the trial's original intended start date in early 2012 and saw claims handling transferred to the Court Supervised Settlement Program (CSSP). The oil major believes the CSSP is now agreeing to pay out for billions of dollars worth of "fictitious" claims in what BP terms a "raid on its coffers." BP suggested fraud may be taking place "in the solicitation of the claim by attorneys, accountants or other claims preparation services, the preparation of the financial records and claim application, or the processing of the claim." It said that the CSSP was spending substantially less than the GCCF spent to combat fraud. "This seems inappropriate given that the GCCF's fraud detection program enabled it to identify more than 7,000 claims as 'multi-claimant scams or even efforts at criminal fraud'," BP said. The GCCF referred more than half of these to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal investigation. BP said that US police were already "clamping down on cases of fraud and other abuses in the claims process." "In recent months, U.S. attorneys in Florida, Alabama and Louisiana have secured guilty pleas and convictions against multiple individuals for attempting to defraud the claims process and take money to which they are not entitled under the law," it said. A former FBI director, Louis Freeh, has been appointed to lead an independent investigation into "possible ethical violations or misconduct" by the CSSP after allegations of misconduct by officials.