The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced in December that it was awarding a whistleblower with more than $900,000 for a tip that allowed the agency to bring multiple large enforcement actions against certain entities.
The award marked the second in the span of a week — and the final award handed out in what was a record-breaking 2016 for the Office of the Whistleblower’s whistleblower reporting program. The SEC tends to release only limited information about any individual case, but this particular whistleblower provided the agency with a high-quality tip that helped end a fraudulent scheme in a corporate environment.
The Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, Jane Norberg, voiced her pleasure with the way the whistleblower program has encouraged tipsters to come forward and assist the government in cracking down on fraud and wrongdoing.
Filing a whistleblower claim with the SEC
This award was the 37th the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower has provided since the inception of the program in 2012. At the time the award was given to the whistleblower (there has been another award since), there had been more than $136 million awarded to these whistleblowers, all of whom provided the agency with unique, useful information that led to successful enforcement actions.
Whistleblowers are eligible to receive awards ranging from 10 to 30 percent of the money collected if such sanctions are worth more than $1 million. All the payments to these whistleblowers come from an investor protection fund, which is funded entirely by sanctions paid to the SEC.
For further guidance on how you can file a whistleblower claim in the SEC’s program, contact an experienced Dallas whistleblower attorney at Whistleblower Law for Managers.
