SEC Issues Largest-Ever Whistleblower Award of $279M | Hacker News Reader

SEC Issues Largest-Ever Whistleblower Award of $279M

sec.gov

53 pointsmfiguiere35 comments

How hard is it likely to be, realistically, to figure out who got this money? That is way, way too big a windfall to effectively hide. Even getting rid of it would take an enormous amount of work, if you didn't want it.

This is like with lottery winners - anonymity won't necessarily protect you. I'm not sure this encourages me to be a whistleblower... it would create so many more stressors after what was already a phenomenally stressful time. $10m or so would be easier to hide.

I don't think the issue will be hiding that you have the money. That's almost trivial. The person next to you on the bus could have a huge amount of money but until they start spending, you have no way of knowing.

However, given the size of the payment, it must be possible to work out what enforcement this award is related to. Once that is established, the court documents should reveal the potential whistleblower's identity.

Can't court documents be sealed? And public documents use an alias?

Sealed how? Unless they vaporize the documents and everyone who ever saw them, leaks remain likely.

This award has to be for something against a large financial firm, a $279M award is based on a % of the damage in some way I believe. The person likely had to be intimately familiar with whatever was reported so they are highly likely to know the ins and outs of dealing with large numbers of digits of money and financial products/solutions beyond what retail/layperson would be aware of. I think they might have ideas on what they would want to do with the money and/or already be financially well off that buying more things doesn't really make large life impacts anymore (i.e well into 6 digit earnings territory). I think its likely if they wanted this to not be publicly known its entirely plausible they could do that.

Unless it is a low paid janitorial engineer that was reading the trash.

For 300 million dollars, I think I'd manage.

What if they threatened your family? Your kids? What if you had to move to another state or another country? Could you ever have normal friends again? Move around the world without a bodyguard and bulletproof windows?

Large sums of money don't give you security in your current lifestyle. They completely and totally change your existence in permanent and often negative ways.

The problem: where are you getting literally any of this from? You’ve hopped up like 4 chains of unfounded assumptions.

This sort of thing happens to people who get windfalls all the time:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/lottery-winners-no-ha...

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14723441

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/03/sudden-wealth-can-come-with-...

and it coming from a whistleblower award against people you previously worked with will only make it a dozen times worse.

This reddit post is a great retelling of the perils that await people who get these kinds of monetary windfalls: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/comment/c...

OTOH, it is generally the case that the outcome is unpredictable and we like to tell the stories where it is destructive even if in the average case it is overall beneficial.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35824058

300 million easily pays for literally and metaphorically bulletproof security indefinitely. What security-related lifestyle changes couldn’t be overcome with this sum of money?

On a different note, the lottery typically ruins people’s lives. There’s even a TV show about it. People just can’t adjust to that kind of change in wealth. I think this would be no different.

"Overcome" in the sense of "you'll stay alive and still have a lot of money," not in the sense of "you'll get to keep the lifestyle you had before, just with more money." Your anonymity is gone forever.

Ah, yeah, definitely

> What if they threatened your family?

Then they picked the wrong person to fuck with, as they'll be finding out? ;)

I mean, if that's the kind of thing you want to spend your life dealing with, you'd make a better lottery winner than most.

Thanks. Yeah, it's honestly not a problem.

But you won't know until you get the call from the hospital. There's no opportunity to flex your badassery.

Heh. That's not how these things work in practise. ;)

I think with that kind of $$$ it's impossible to be Anon. Someone better get out of the country, preferably to some places untouchable and lay low.

Unless they somehow did this against cartel guys or a motorcycle club this person has nothing to worry about.

I mean the person probably just forwarded emails and wore a wire during meetings with bank execs. It's the SEC not the FBI.

What would happen with 100m that wouldn't happen with 10m? Seems like all of the same processes, traps and threats would exist for both, or at least 90% overlap.

Bet they're thankful they went through SEC and not CFTC.

https://www.whistleblowers.org/save-the-cftc-whistleblower-p...

Is this maybe connected to the Sam Bankman Fried case? FTX, Alameda Research and the sorts. Apparently the one of their execs switched sides, forgot her name

Exceedingly unlikely. Cutting a deal and agreeing to testify for the criminal prosecution after you’ve been caught doesn’t make you a whistleblower. It’s also way too early. The FTX enforcement actions are only just getting underway.

Is it normal to not even reveal what case this is related to? Or perhaps to early to reveal? Obviously they won’t reveal the whistleblower name.

SEC whistleblower awards range from 10 to 30 percent of fines collected, so presumably this was in exchange for information about a case that led to collections somewhere in between the range of $920 million to $2.79 billion. Assuming the SEC has already published the successful prosecution of the underlying case, you can probably figure out which one it was. And I bet the total was a nice even multiple of 2.79.

They had a good year,

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-206

They hit the banks for 1.2B$ for using personal devices to conduct business communications, maybe that's the whistle?

Requires a successful prosecution so probably past tense. My guess is wall street in general.. 16 firms paid 1.1 billion a couple years ago collectively. But it could be someone else.. the SEC took in 6.4 billion in penalties last year.

The crypto ones are going to be off the hook if there are any whistleblowers that outed them.

It seems so grotesque. I get the incentive to report criminal activity, but 1/4 billion seems excessive.

Grotesque? The fund that pays these things out is getting way more than that back from this whistleblower's help (in fines, etc. paid out by the criminals).

Did you read the article? It explains the reason why the amount is so high.

Considering the account is 7 months old and it's commenting history... it's likely a kid or a troll behind the account.

Oh yea, I'm a troll because we disagree; that maybe I believe funds should be dispersed to victims of crime... Maybe it is time to grow up instead of living in an echo chamber of adolescent group-think.

Since your using a pseudonym it's impossible to prove either way. But this comment doesn't help your case.

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