Posts belonging to Category SEC Whistleblowers



Financial Services Whistleblower Cases – A New Twist

 

Financial service industry whistleblower claims have become a hot item. Ironically, it is even reported that a crowd funding website is being used by an individual who hopes to raise money from people interested in investing in a portfolio of financial whistleblower claims.  Of course, crowd funding is one of the newest and most controversial […]

SEC Whistleblower Laws Are Working

 

Securities firms and their general counsel are openly worried about the SEC’s whistleblower program. They fought tooth and nail to stop the program, arguing that whistleblowers would bypass the companies’ internal channels and take information straight to the SEC. However, the program is in place and the first award was granted in August, with the […]

Whistleblowers Srike Again

 

Bank of New York Mellon and the state of Virginia have agreed to resolve their dispute over BNY Mellon’s allegedly overcharging Virginia’s employee pension fund on currency transactions by means of hidden markups. The settlement calls for a $1.1 million payment to a whistleblower group (“Whistleblower to Get Big Payment in Bank of New York-Virginia […]

SEC Sanctions MassMutual for Variable Annuity Abuses

 

MassMutual failed to disclose risks associated with certain Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefit riders (specifically its GMIB 5 and GMIB 6 riders) and must now pay $1.65 million to settle SEC charges that it misled variable annuity investors.

How Does Wall Street Deal with Major Frauds? It Points the Finger at Mid-Level Employees

 

William D. Cohan, who worked on Wall Street as a senior mergers and acquisitions banker for 15 years, has a theory on why no Wall senior executives have been sued by regulators or prosecuted for their roles in the waves of fraud and malfeasance we have witnessed in the last decade. The senior executives blame […]

Whitleblower Claims Rise as Wall Street Fires Employees

 

Even senior Wall Street bank employees are finding the new whistleblower laws beneficial. Wall Street banks fought tooth and against the Dodd-Frank whistleblower protections. The big banks claimed that protecting employees who report violations to outsiders would compromise their own supposedly robust internal reporting and compliance programs. But critics responded that Wall Street banks simply […]

Retaliation Against Whistleblowers Doesn’t Pay

 

Corporations that retaliate against whistleblowers are learning tough lessons. The Ethics Resource Center recently released an analysis of corporate whistleblowers and retaliation against them. The analysis had a disturbing finding ? complaints of retaliation against whistleblowers are rising. The chief complaints involve denied promotions and raises, and transfers to unpleasant assignments. On the other hand, […]

Huge Award Shows the Benefits of Whistleblowers

 

The IRS has awarded $104 million to former UBS AG banker Bradley Birkenfeld for providing it with inside information about UBS’s illegal encouragement of secret offshore accounts by U.S. taxpayers. The IRS issued a statement confirming the award because Mr. Birkenfeld signed a disclosure waiver. It is the largest IRS whistleblower award ever, according to […]

SEC Begins Paying Out Whistleblower Awards

 

The first whistleblower award in the amount of $50,000 was paid by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to a person who helped shut down an investment fraud. The SEC action resulted in more than $1 million in sanctions, of which $150,000 has so far been collected. Furthermore, the award could increase if more money […]

Wall Street Continues to Perpetuate the Same Old Abuses

 

A former UBS research analyst has filed a lawsuit filed against the bank alleging that he was fired for refusing to write inaccurate research reports to benefit (or avoid harming) UBS’s trading positions in the commercial mortgage-backed securities market. The analyst reportedly seeks reinstatement with 2.5 times accrued back pay. (“Former UBS Research Analyst Sues […]