SEC Whistleblower Awards Total Reaches $158 Million

In late July, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officials announced there were two more cases in which the regulator handed out whistleblower awards, totaling $4.2 million for the two whistleblowers. The total of the whistleblower payments distributed through the program is now at $158 million.

One of the awards was announced on July 27 and was for more than $1.7 million to “a company insider who provided the agency with critical information to help stop a fraud that would have otherwise been difficult to detect,” according to the press release issued by the SEC.

Another award was announced on July 25, and amounted to about $2.5 million handed out to “an employee of a domestic government agency whose whistleblower tip helped launch an SEC investigation,” according to officials.

As always, the SEC has kept the identity of these whistleblowers hidden and will not provide any additional information about anyone who provides the SEC with original, timely and credible information to help the agency catch firms or individuals who are engaged in wrongdoing.

SEC whistleblower awards can be lucrative

Any whistleblower awards handed out by the SEC can range from 10 to 30 percent of the money collected if monetary sanctions arising out of the whistleblower action exceed $1 million. All these payments come from an investor protection fund established by Congress and entirely financed by monetary sanctions paid to the SEC by violators of securities laws. No money has ever been taken or withheld from harmed investors to pay whistleblowers for their assistance.

The SEC has now rewarded 46 whistleblowers for the useful information they provided to the agency.

To learn more about how you can make a whistleblower report with the SEC, contact a skilled Dallas attorney at Whistleblower Law for Managers.