On August 4, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced awards totaling more than $104 million to seven whistleblowers in connection with a successful SEC enforcement action. The SEC’s Press Release can be found (here), and the Order can be found (here).
Whistleblower
SEC Issues Largest Whistleblower Bounty Award Ever To One Individual
As we reported here, on May 5, 2023, the SEC issued an award of $279 million to a whistleblower. This is the largest award the SEC has issued to an individual whistleblower in the history of the SEC Office of the Whistleblower’s program.
Over $1 Billion Whistleblower Awards Paid to Date by the SEC
By Mee (Rina) Kim on
Last week, the SEC announced accumulated awards of over $1 billion paid to 207 whistleblowers since its first award in 2012. Over $500 million was awarded in fiscal year 2021 alone.
The SEC crossed the billion-dollar milestone with awards of $110 million and $4 million to two whistleblowers on September 15, 2021. The $110 million award marks the second-highest award to date and consists of $40 million stemming from an SEC case and $70 million for related actions by another agency.
July 2021 Update of the SEC’s Covered Actions for Potential Whistleblower Claims
By Mee (Rina) Kim on
On July 30, 2021, the SEC posted 14 Notices of Covered Actions, after which individuals have 90 calendar days to apply for a whistleblower award. As discussed in our prior post, the SEC publishes these Notices for cases in which the final judgment or order, either by itself or together with other prior judgments or orders in the same action issued after July 21, 2010, results in monetary sanctions exceeding $1 million.
In this post, we briefly survey the 14 Notices of Covered Actions from July 2021. (See our previous post on the SEC’s Notices of Covered Actions from June 2021.) Several of the alleged misconducts in the 14 Covered Actions also resulted in parallel criminal actions.
June 2021 Update of the SEC’s Covered Actions for Potential Whistleblower Claims
By Mee (Rina) Kim on
On June 30, 2021, the SEC posted six Notices of Covered Actions, for which individuals have 90 calendar days to apply for a whistleblower award. As discussed in our prior post, the SEC publishes Notices for cases in which the final judgment or order, by itself or together with other prior judgments or orders in the same action issued after July 21, 2010, results in monetary sanctions exceeding $1 million.
In this post, we briefly survey the six June 2021 Notices of Covered Actions.
Review of the SEC Whistleblower Program: At the Crossroads of Securities Law and Whistleblower Protection
By Mee (Rina) Kim on
Fiscal year 2020 marked the ten-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s whistleblower program. Since its inception through the end of FY2020, the SEC has awarded approximately $562 million to 106 individuals. Even a decade after it was created, the whistleblower program continues to break its own records; in 2020, the SEC issued several awards landing in the top 10 whistleblower awards of all time.
S.D.N.Y Dismisses Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Action
By Steven J. Pearlman on
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Key Takeaways from SEC/DOJ Enforcement Panel
By Russell Kostelak & Tanya Dmitronow on
Last week, representatives of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) participated in Sandpiper Partners LLC’s Annual SEC/DOJ Enforcement 2016 Panel at the Metropolitan Club. Participants included: Stephanie Avakian (Deputy Director, Division of Enforcement, SEC), Nicole Friedlander (Chief, Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York), and Telemachus Kasulis (Deputy Chief, Securities and Commodities Task Force, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York).