Takata - Auto Safety ($1 billion)

Two former Takata employees, Mark Lillie and another man who chose to remain anonymous, provided extensive assistance to the U.S. government in its criminal case against Takata, the maker of defective airbags which exploded and claimed the lives of 22 people and set off a worldwide recall of nearly 100 million airbag inflators.  In January 2017, Takata pled guilty to wire fraud and agreed to pay $1 billion in criminal penalties stemming from the company’s fraudulent conduct in relation to sales of defective airbag inflators. The criminal action also resulted in three high-level Takata executives pleading guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy charges. The awards to the whistleblowers were the first ever made under the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act, a federal whistleblower-reward program.  Read more here.

Tagged in: Auto Safety, Whistleblower Rewards,