Importance of Whistleblowers

With Jeffrey Sterling Conviction, The Great Whistleblower/Leaker Divide Endures

By Gordon Schnell There has been no slowdown in the government's crackdown on intelligence whistleblowers. This despite the storm of support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and his revelations on the spy agency's largely renounced, and according to one federal court, "almost Orwellian," secret phone tapping program. See The Redemption of Edward Snowden. After Monday's jury conviction of former CIA officer...

Holder Calls for Larger Whistleblower Awards

By Marlene Koury Attorney General Eric Holder wants to raise the award limits for Wall Street whistleblowers, citing the need to provide greater incentives to blow the whistle. In a speech he gave yesterday at New York University, Holder said whistleblowers provide critical information to investigators in prosecuting cases, but the incentives provided to certain whistleblowers are simply insufficient. Holder's...

WATD Boston Radio Interview With Gordon Schnell on Whistleblowing and Sports

There has been a never-ending pageantry of fallen sports heroes and broken sports programs -- Lance Armstrong; Penn State; Alex Rodriguez; Tyson Gay; Oklahoma State; Rutgers; the New Orleans Saints.  The list goes on and on.  You name it.  It seems these days there is not a professional sport or big-time college sports program that has not been at the center of or deeply impacted by one scandal or another...

So You Think You Want to Be a Whistleblower -- A Few Words for the Wise

By Gordon Schnell, Marlene Koury and Jason Enzler

This is a gilded age for whistleblowers.  Relatively speaking that is.  It was not all that long ago that whistleblowers were treated as mere opportunists ratting out their friends or colleagues.  Squealing not for the greater good, but for a quick buck, or to cover up their own failings or misdeeds.  Many still see it that way.  Afterall, we are trained at an...

Show Me the Money – Large Rewards as an Indispensable Piece of the Whistleblower Enforcement System

By Gordon Schnell In yet another corporate attempt to upend the surging success of the American whistleblower system, the US Chamber of Commerce recently proposed a cap on whistleblower rewards.  Under the False Claims Act as well as the recently implemented whistleblower provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, whistleblowers are entitled to between 15% and 30% of any government recovery.  This has...

Shattering the Myth of the Whistleblower as a Rogue and Disloyal Employee

By Gordon Schnell In its recently issued report titled Inside the Mind of a Whistleblower, the Ethics Resource Center (ERC) has made some surprising findings on how whistleblowers behave.  Perhaps the most surprising of all is that virtually none of them   -- a mere 3% -- go directly to the government to report the fraud or misconduct they have witnessed.  Instead, they first work within their company to expose...

Looking for a Few Good Whistleblowers

By Gordon Schnell  Last week, the Justice Department put out a formal call to arms for whistleblowers with inside information on fraud or misconduct relating to residential mortgage-backed securities.  These are those nasty bundles of questionable mortgages that financial institutions for years traded like monopoly money and which ultimately triggered the financial meltdown that began in 2008.  After all of this...