[HN Gopher] SEC Issues Largest-Ever Whistleblower Award of $279M
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SEC Issues Largest-Ever Whistleblower Award of $279M
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 40 points
Date : 2023-05-05 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sec.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sec.gov)
| quotz wrote:
| 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
| elliekelly wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| It seems so grotesque. I get the incentive to report criminal
| activity, but 1/4 billion seems excessive.
| thewildginger wrote:
| Did you read the article? It explains the reason why the amount
| is so high.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Considering the account is 7 months old and it's commenting
| history... it's likely a kid or a troll behind the account.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| 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).
| tedunangst wrote:
| Bet they're thankful they went through SEC and not CFTC.
|
| https://www.whistleblowers.org/save-the-cftc-whistleblower-p...
| indigodaddy wrote:
| 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.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| 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.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| 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.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| 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.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| 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.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Unless they somehow did this against cartel guys or a
| motorcycle club this person has nothing to worry about.
| matt_s wrote:
| 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.
| takinola wrote:
| 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.
| d23 wrote:
| For 300 million dollars, I think I'd manage.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| 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.
| comfypotato wrote:
| 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.
| d23 wrote:
| The problem: where are you getting literally any of this
| from? You've hopped up like 4 chains of unfounded
| assumptions.
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(page generated 2023-05-05 23:02 UTC)