The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently awarded an attention grabbing $50 million to a single whistleblower, the agency’s largest bounty hunter award to date under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The award prompted us to look at other bounty hunter awards issued by the SEC so far this year, and it is clear the agency is well on its way to a record year of whistleblower payments.
This is an important development, both because many might not appreciate the potential dollar liability involved in a bounty hunter award – to put a $50 million award into perspective, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission collected a total of only $39 million in FY 2019 via its litigation efforts – and because there are reasonable steps an employer can take to minimize potential liability.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.