Importance of Whistleblowers

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...