Whistleblower News From The Inside — November 17, 2015

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

Education Management Corp. to pay $95.5M to settle 4 whistleblower lawsuits —  The whistleblowers alleged the for-profit education company violated the False Claims Act by unlawfully recruiting students through a high pressure boiler room where admissions personnel were paid based purely on the number of students they enrolled.  DOJ

2015 SEC Whistleblower results are in — The SEC Office of the Whistleblower has just released its annual report to Congress, revealing the program’s continued growth and success with a record number of 4,00 tips last year.  FCPA Blog

Whistleblowing a necessary function — “By making the whistleblowers pay a high personal price, some in the government send a quiet message to others who may consider exposing wrongdoing: don’t even think about saying anything because we’ll make your life a living hell.  Help may be on the way.”  Arkcity

TIAA-CREF accused of land grabs in Brazil — “The American financial giant and its Brazilian partners have plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into farmland deals in the cerrado, a huge region on the edge of the Amazon rain forest where wooded savannas are being razed to make way for agricultural expansion, fueling environmental concerns.”  NYT

Chaos at San Francisco Fine Arts Museums as socialite president fires whistleblower — Michelle Gutierrez, the de Young Museum’s financial director, was fired after reporting the museum’s board president Dede Wilsey paid $450,000 to a former staffer without board approval.  Artnet News

Chip credit cards giver merchants another grievance against banks — “Retailers complain that they have spent billions of dollars upgrading their payment terminals to accommodate a system that cuts down only on the fraud shouldered by banks, not merchants.”  NYT