JPMorgan Whistleblowers Set to Reap Record $61 Million Bounty
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Two whistleblowers are apparently set to share a record $61 million award from the SEC for helping make the case that JPMorgan Chase & Co. failed to disclose to wealthy clients that it was steering them into investments that would be most profitable for the bank.
The SEC issued letters notifying six whistleblower applicants of the preliminary decision. The letters said that two of them would share almost a quarter of the record asset-management settlement that the SEC reached with the bank in December 2015. JPMorgan agreed to pay $307 million, with $267 million going to the SEC and $40 million to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In the letters, the SEC said one person would receive 18 percent of the SEC portion of the settlement and the other 5 percent, which would translate to $48 million and $13 million. The higher figure would dwarf the previous top SEC award, for $30 million, paid to an anonymous whistleblower in 2014, according the figures posted on the agency’s website.
The SEC, CFTC and JPMorgan declined to comment. JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets, admitted disclosure failures from 2008 to 2013 related to two units that manage money — its securities subsidiary and its nationally chartered bank — as part of the SEC settlement. The New York-based bank said that the omissions in its communications were unintentional and that it has since enhanced its disclosures. Bloomberg
Tagged in: Anonymity, SEC Whistleblower Reward Program, Whistleblower Rewards,