SEC Pays Out Monster $279 Million Whistleblower Award

We guess you can forget the old adage from your childhood that "no one likes a tattle-tale". Because when you tattle to the tune of $279 million, you can buy as many new friends as you'd like.

This might be the case for the whistleblower who was bestowed a massive $279 million award from the SEC as a result of helping out with an investigation that led to "three different settlements or fines", according to Bloomberg. 

Gurbir Grewal, the SEC’s enforcement chief, said this week: “The size of today’s award – the highest in our program’s history – not only incentivizes whistleblowers to come forward with accurate information about potential securities law violations, but also reflects the tremendous success of our whistleblower program.”

The award is more than twice the previous record of $114 million, which was awarded back in October 2020. 

The SEC said that information provided to the agency expanded “the scope of misconduct charged" in an investigation that was already ongoing. In keeping with policy, neither the names of the company nor the whistleblower were disclosed. 

Whistleblowers usually get between 10% and 30% of an amount collected in penalties by the agency, the report says. In sum, the SEC has paid out over $1 billion in awards since the program was started as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.