Lance Armstrong... facing bankruptcy.

A federal judge has rejected Lance Armstrong’s bid to dismiss a whistleblower lawsuit claiming that he and his former cycling team, which the US Postal Service had sponsored, defrauded the government in a scheme to use banned, performance-enhancing drugs.

US District Judge Robert Wilkins said complaints brought by the government and Armstrong’s ex-team-mate, Floyd Landis, were “rife with allegations that Armstrong had knowledge of the doping, and that he made false statements to conceal the doping and the attendant obligation which would have resulted if the government had known of the doping.”

Armstrong, 42, was stripped of his seven Tour de France victories and banned for life from racing in 2012 by the US Anti-Doping Agency after it accused him in a report of engineering one of the most sophisticated doping schemes in sports.

Armstrong, who had long denied using performance-enhancing drugs, admitted in January 2013 to doping and faces several civil lawsuits that could drain the fortune he accumulated as one of the world’s most popular and successful athletes.

The cancer survivor’s net worth was estimated at $125 million in 2012.

Robert Luskin and Elliot Peters, two of Armstrong’s lawyers, have argued that the Postal Service benefited from the valuable exposure it got from its sponsorship and that the lawsuit had been brought too late.

Landis, who lied about his own doping before confessing, originally brought the lawsuit in 2010 under a federal law, the False Claims Act, that lets whistleblowers pursue fraud cases on behalf of the government, and obtain rewards if successful.

He stands to gain up to 25 per cent of whatever sum the government recovers.

The Justice Department joined the case in February 2013, hoping to recoup some of the estimated $40.5m that the Postal Service paid from 1998 to 2004 for its logos to be displayed by Armstrong and his team during races.