SEC Awards Whistleblower with $1.2 Million Payout

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently awarded a whistleblower with $1.2 million after they provided the agency with valuable information and ongoing assistance that led to a successful enforcement action.

The award was just the latest in a record fiscal year for the SEC’s Whistleblower Program. Since October 1, 2020, through this award, the SEC awarded approximately $377 million to 76 different whistleblowers.

As is always the case with SEC whistleblower awards, the SEC did not release any further information about the whistleblower or the case they helped break. This practice is meant to protect the whistleblower’s identity and shield them from potential retaliation.

Whistleblower program continues to grow

As previously mentioned, this has been a massive year for whistleblower awards from the SEC. This is partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic providing more opportunities to blow the whistle on internal wrongdoing, but also because the program has naturally been expanding since its introduction.

Since the program’s first award in 2012 up through this award in July, the SEC awarded more than $939 million to 182 individuals.

Whistleblowers can receive 10 to 30 percent of the funds recovered by the government when a successful enforcement action occurs, if total sanctions are greater than $1 million. The amount of money the whistleblower gets is influenced in large part by the timeliness and uniqueness of the information provided. In many types of cases, the federal government would never become aware of the wrongdoing without the reports from whistleblowers.

To learn more about the steps involved with submitting a whistleblower report through the SEC’s whistleblower program, contact an experienced attorney at Kardell Law Group.