SEC Awards Largest-Ever Whistleblower Bounty of almost double this time

May 8, 2023: Friday, the nation’s top securities regulator declared it had given a $279 million prize to its whistleblower schedule, the biggest in its history.

The Securities and Exchange Commission stated that the unnamed whistleblower provided information and assistance that led to a successful enforcement action, which the agency didn’t describe. The payout is well over double the second-biggest award of $114 million, issued in October 2020.

The vast sum is intended to incentivize notices to disclose potential securities of the rule violations and “reflects the tremendous over of our whistleblower program,” Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, stated in a statement released Friday.

He added that the program also directly benefits investors because whistleblowers have aided enforcement actions which resulted in the return of over $4 billion in ill-gotten profit and interest.

The SEC did not offer much information about the case or the whistleblower different than they gave “sustained assistance including multiple interviews and written submissions were critical to the success of these actions,” stated Creola Kelly, chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower.

The agency stated a record amount of civil penalties in the fiscal year 2022, totalling over $4.1 billion across 760 enforcement actions. That year, Allianz Global Investors and three portfolio managers agreed to pay $1 billion to resolve defrauding investors, and 16 Wall Street firms, including Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, settled at over $1.1 billion for widespread recordkeeping and communications failures.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act protects the identity of whistleblowers. Whistleblower payments are retired from an investor protection fund founded by Congress. Rewards can range from 10% to 30% of the money gathered when sanctions exceed $1 million.