The Wall Street Journal published an article today about whistleblower rewards under the new provisions enacted under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”).  In After Tip, the Claim For Reward, the Journal writes about Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (“BNY”) and State Street Corp., two companies whose employees blew the [...]

When the Association of Corporate Counsel held its annual meeting last month in Denver, the agenda reflected growing concern among in-house lawyers that they may become the targets of investigation or even prosecution by the SEC or other regulators.  The ACC gathering of some 2,000 general counsels and other top legal executives kicked off on [...]

On August 12, 2011, the day the SEC’s whistleblower program formally went into effect, the SEC Office of the Whistleblower began publishing Notices of Covered Action that alert potential whistleblowers to opportunities to claim awards under the new program.  The published notices describe all SEC actions that result in final orders or judgments which, along [...]

In its September 30, 2011 article “At SEC, Strategy Changes Course” The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Securities and Exchange Commission is making a noticeable effort to increase its oversight of financial misconduct on Wall Street. Whereas in the past the SEC has had a general policy of reserving litigation for cases of intentional fraud [...]

The deal-of-the-day website service Groupon, Inc. has substantially amended its income statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of its plans to go public, after a tip from an accounting professor to the SEC’s new whistleblower program questioned the company’s financial health and its compliance with generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”). The revised statement drops the company’s calculated [...]

by David J. Marshall The SEC’s new whistleblower program – officially just one month old on September 12, 2011 – has already attracted a large number of tips from insiders who have provided the Commission with information about securities violations.  Whistleblower advocates are impressed with the job the SEC’s new Office of the Whistleblower is [...]

Readers of the SEC Whistleblower Blog will also be interested in learning about the whistleblower-reward program operated by the Internal Revenue Service. Like the SEC whistleblower program, which provides awards of 10% to 30% of amounts recovered by the SEC based on a whistleblower’s information about securities violations, the IRS program provides similar awards to [...]

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US Government Agency which regulates the $601 trillion futures and options trading markets, voted 4-1 yesterday to adopt rules for its new whistleblower program, as well as for mandating that all transactions in those markets be recorded in a database.  These rules have been anticipated since they were [...]

 July 28, 2011 – In an lengthy opinion piece published in today’s National Law Journal¸ whistleblower lawyers David J. Marshall and Alison Asarnow explain that the new SEC whistleblower program serves and important public interest in addressing securities violations and also provides the incentives that are needed to help employees overcome their fears of retaliation [...]

Reuters reported yesterday on the SEC’s new “Tips, Complaints, and Referrals” (TCR) Database, which the agency is now using to track tips provided to the SEC.  Reuters reports that tips entered into the $21 million system can be accessed by 2,300 SEC employees, a far cry from the system formerly used at the SEC, where [...]