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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

I'm not. It was not an exchange. He neither knew about the money, nor expected it at the start. I think it would be more precise to say:

"Bank exec blew a whistle his company and got 3 years in minimum security prison. By coincidence he also got a lot of money afterwards."

Basically unless the whole story the whistleblower reported was fabricated, I don't think there's any situation where I'd be ok with the whistleblower being the only one jailed. As part of a larger group - sure, maybe.

Otherwise what's the point of whistleblowing? It would only work if you hate the company more than you like your current life. Or if you knew how to do it anonymously.

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What do you mean he didn't know about it? He's a banking exec whistleblowing on tax evasion. The IRS bounty on recoveries is not exactly a secret. Even in the unlikely event that he himself wasn't aware of his prospects when he went in, you'd assume literally the very first thing any competent lawyer would have told him was "you stand to make a hundred million dollars if you go through with it".

The thing I like about the precedent? That banking executives need to be on their toes because all of their colleagues have an immense incentive to rat them out.

> (It is, however, extremely important to me that I make clear that I had no idea there was a law like this for a reward when I resigned from UBS in October 2005, as the law passed in December 2006.)

Huh. Fair point. I stand corrected.

Immunity plus the bonus would be a better incentive to rat them out.

No, I still sort of agree with you. The law did pass after he started to whistleblow. However, he wasn't whistleblowing because they were a sneaky bank doing things like set up tax evasion schemes. He was whistleblowing because they set him up to take the blame for the damages. His next plan was to get immunity for all his crimes while screwing them and keeping his money. Had that document not formed or he seen it, he would've kept helping companies in their crimes (or shady stuff) in exchange for large paycheck at the bank.

So, he's still a piece of shit that doesn't give a damn about tax evasion doing it solely for himself. He got a great reward in the process anyway despite it backfiring a bit. Like you said above, I think it's probably a good trade so long as it didn't screw up his head in there. :)

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