On July 6, 2011, whistleblower lawyer David J. Marshall of the law firm Katz, Marshall & Banks in Washington, DC, who recently authored a comprehensive guide to the new SEC whistleblower program, presented on a panel discussing those new whistleblower provisions in connection with the D.C. Bar CLE Program.  Mr. Marshall presented form the whistleblower’s perspective, [...]

A $230 million Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case is testing the agency’s reach.  In January the SEC charged Francisco Illarramendi with running a Ponzi scheme through his unregistered investment advisory firm Michael Kenwood Capital Management.  Later this year Highview Point Partners LLC was added as a relief defendant because it was alleged to hold [...]

David J. Marshall, a partner at Katz, Marshall & Banks, LLP, has published a comprehensive SEC Whistleblower guide outlining the rules that allow insiders to earn substantial monetary awards for reporting securities violations to the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Since the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, Marshall has successfully represented many employees of public companies [...]

 Anxieties are mounting in the derivatives market and the connected legal community as it becomes increasingly apparent that the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) will not have the new regulatory rules for that market completed by July 16, the day they are required by law to go into [...]

With the Securities and Exchange Commission due to vote this week on final rules for its new whistleblower-reward program, lawyers who represent corporate whistleblowers are calling on the SEC to reject business-backed demands to penalize insiders who report securities violations directly to the commission without first using internal compliance programs.  Michael A. Sullivan of Atlanta [...]

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously last week to propose rules for the new whistleblower program that rewards individuals who provide the agency with “high-quality tips that lead to successful enforcement actions.” The new program was included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and  Consumer Protection Act that was enacted earlier this year.  In [...]

In an effort to curb the rampant financial misconduct that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, exemplified by Bernard Madoff’s notorious ponzi scheme, the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act of 2009 required the Securities and Exchange Commission to set aside at least $300 million in rewards for financial industry whistleblowers to incentivize internal reports of financial [...]

In the past decade, through the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, and the McCaskill amendment, the Federal Government has taken significant strides to improve whistleblower protections in the workplace in an attempt to cut down on fraud, resuscitate the economy, and protect workers’ rights.  This sentiment has begun to trickle down [...]