SEC Pays $22m to Whistleblower in Second-Largest Amount Ever Awarded

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has awarded over $22 million to a whistleblower whose detailed tip and extensive assistance helped the agency put a stop to a well-hidden fraud at the company where he worked.

Second-Largest Award Ever

The award is the second-largest amount that the SEC has awarded a whistleblower. The largest, $30 million, was awarded in 2014.

Jane Norberg, Acting Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, commented: “Company employees are in unique positions behind-the-scenes to unravel complex or deeply buried wrongdoing. Without this whistleblower’s courage, information, and assistance, it would have been extremely difficult for law enforcement to discover this securities fraud on its own.”

The SEC’s whistleblower program, which has been rewarding valuable information from tipsters since its inception in 2011, has now surpassed $100 million in total money awarded.

Over $107 million has been awarded to 33 whistleblowers who became eligible for an award by voluntarily providing the SEC with original and useful information that led to a successful enforcement action.

Whistleblower awards can range from 10 to 30 percent of the money collected when the monetary sanctions exceed $1 million.

Ex-Alpari Exec and Madoff Whistleblower

In a further high-profile whistleblower case, Finance Magnates reported earlier this month that a group of three bank employees assembled by Harry Markopolos, the forensic accountant who spotted Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme years before it imploded, are due to be paid a huge sum for their efforts in in the foreign exchange markets.

Ex-Alpari executive, Ryan Gagne was one of the trio recruited or by Markopolos who set out in search of bank employees to prove his case, persuading Gagne amongst others to help.

The team spent years looking for evidence of the currency manipulations and proof that State Street and Bank of New York Mellon executed FX transactions in a manner that enabled them to reap substantial profits at the expense of its custody clients.

Gagne now stands to receive a share of a SEC award totalling over $100 million.