This year’s Symposium will be available either in-person or online on Wednesday, March 13, starting at 815 am EDT.  It offers 7.5 CLE hours, including 1 Ethics hour and 4 Trial Practice hours. Cost is $279.  

You can register (and see the full Agenda) here: atlantabar.org/….   Topics include: 

The post Register for 2024 “Whistleblower Law Symposium”–Live Event (Virtually) on March 13 appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

On Sunday, May 14, 60 Minutes featured an interview with our IRS and SEC whistleblower client David Nielsen.

My colleague Richard Rubin and I are proud to represent this principled whistleblower.

#cbs #60minutes #whistleblower #finchmccranie #secwhistleblower #irswhistleblower #ensignpeak

The post 60 Minutes Interviews Our IRS & SEC Whistleblower Client David Nielsen: “Mormon Blows Whistle on Church’s Alleged ‘Clandestine Hedge Fund'” appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

• The SEC Whistleblower Reform Act of 2023, co-sponsored by Sens. Grassley, Warren, Collins, Warnock, and Mastro, removes some predictable roadblocks to an effective SEC Whistleblower program.  To summarize from Sen. Grassley’s release, the Act would:
  1. Protect whistleblowers from retaliation if they report violations only in the workplace.  Currently, whistleblowers are protected only once they report misconduct directly to the SEC or certain other officials.

The post Amid Bank Bailouts, SEC Whistleblower Improvements Urged by Senators Grassley & Warren appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

Typically, corporate officers, directors and other corporate fiduciaries are not eligible for SEC Whistleblower awards when they learn of fraud through employee reports. The SEC built in flexibility in its rules, however, when the officer waits “more than 120 days after other responsible compliance personnel possessed the information and failed to adequately address the issue.” Otherwise, frauds that a dishonest company refuses to address might otherwise go unreported.

We have followed the new SEC Whistleblower Program since the Senate staff consulted us in its drafting of the SEC whistleblower provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. We represent SEC and CFTC whistleblowers in claims that concern frauds sometimes as large as $1 billion.

The post Today’s SEC Whistleblower Award to Former Officer of Company Shows Flexibility of SEC Whistleblower Rules appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

This decision rejects any suggestion that the SEC Whistleblower Program’s reach ends at the nation’s borders. The SEC recognized that a leading federal appeals court imposed such a limitation on the anti-retaliation provisions of the Dodd-Frank law, which authorized the SEC Whistleblower Program, but announced it is taking a different approach to whistleblower awards:

“[A]lthough we recognize that the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently held that there was an insufficient territorial nexus for the anti-retaliation protections of Section 21F(h) to apply to a foreign whistleblower who experienced employment retaliation overseas after making certain reports about his foreign employer, Liu v. Siemens, __ F.3d __, 2014 WL 3953672 (2d Cir. Aug. 14, 2014), we do not find that decision controlling here; the whistleblower award provisions have a different Congressional focus than the anti-retaliation provisions, which are generally focused on preventing retaliatory employment actions and protecting the employment relationship.”

The post SEC Welcomes SEC Whistleblowers Who Are Foreign Citizens Living Abroad appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

The size of the award reflects the SEC’s seriousness about utilizing whistleblowers’ information to expose major securities violations. The SEC described this as “ongoing fraud that would have been very difficult to detect” without the whistleblower, according to the Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, Andrew Ceresney.

Sean McKessy, Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, added that this award demonstrates the “international breadth” of the SEC whistleblower program.

The post SEC Whistleblower Receives Record Award of $30 Million appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

Late this year, DOJ will announce that its fraud recoveries tripled from $3 million in FY 2011 to more than $9 million in FY 2012. This trend of increasingly large recoveries of stolen taxpayer funds proves once again the effectiveness of laws like the False Claims Act, which incentivize whistleblowers to expose fraud through its qui tam provisions.

Although health care cases account for the vast majority of FCA recoveries, growing areas include banking, mortgage, and pension fraud cases involving fraudulently obtained taxpayer dollars, as my colleagues at Taxpayers Against Fraud point out. States are also using their own false claims laws to recover stolen taxpayer funds.

In qui tam cases, private citizen whistleblowers (known as “relators”) file suit on the government’s behalf to expose fraud against taxpayer funds. The whistleblowers can receive 15-25% of the government’s recovery of stolen funds if the government prosecutes the case, and 25-30% if the government leaves it to the whistleblower to pursue the recovery.

Consider the history of False Claims Act recoveries that have totalled more than $39 billion since 1986, when Congress authorized meaningful rewards to whistleblowers:

According to DOJ statistics, in 1987 total FCA recoveries were just $86 million (with zero recovered in qui tam cases), but then began a steady climb upward. By 1994, fraud recoveries broke $1 billion for the first time, with $380 million attributable to qui tam cases. In most years since, the government has recovered more than $1 billion under the False Claims Act, and qui tam actions were responsible for the lion’s share. In 2006, DOJ set its previous record of more than $3.1 billion in settlements and judgments for fraud and false claims.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has successfully urged Congress to repeat the FCA’s successes in combatting fraud by establishing the new IRS Whistleblower Program in late 2006, and the new SEC Whistleblower and CFTC Whistleblower Programs under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. We have written extensively about the evolution of each program since they were created.

In a time of budget deficits, stopping fraud that drains taxpayer funds is a goal that any elected official should endorse. DOJ should take a bow for tripling FCA recoveries in FY 2012.

The post Another Record Year–False Claims Act Recoveries Triple in FY 2012 appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

The government contended that Capmark Finance LLC misrepresented the borrowers’ creditworthiness in these two applications for mortgage loans. When the loans defaulted, the FHA sustained losses.

The Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force takes credit for this recovery. It was created to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.

The post Another Financial Fraud False Claims Act Case Nets Millions from Lender appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

In this early phase of what we predict will be a wave of financial fraud cases, the Justice Department announced today the largest False Claims Act settlement to date over mortgage fraud. Bank of America has agreed to pay $1 billion to resolve allegations that the Bank, through Countrywide Financial Corporation and some of its subsidiaries and affiliates, engaged in underwriting and origination mortgage fraud.

DOJ alleged that Countrywide knowingly made loans to unqualified home buyers and used inflated appraisals, thus causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA insured the loans in question.

The post In Largest False Claims Act Case Over Mortgage Fraud, Bank of America to Pay $1 Billion appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.

Disappointingly, the report raised, but did not attempt to answer, fundamental questions that will determine whether the IRS realizes the full potential of the new program in helping close the “tax gap”–or settles for a fraction of what it can accomplish.

Inspired by the dramatic successes of the False Claims Act in combating fraud against the government through rewarding whistleblowers, Sen. Charles Grassley spearheaded the effort to create the first meaningful IRS Whistleblower Program in 2006.

The post GAO Report Released on IRS Whistleblower Program: Raising–But Not Answering–the Fundamental Questions of What the Tax Whistleblower Program Needs to Be Most Effective appeared first on Whistleblower Lawyer Blog.