How Does the SEC Determine the Amount of a Whistleblower Award?
When you take a risk as big as becoming a whistleblower, you should be awarded accordingly if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is able to impose consequences on the person or corporation who is responsible for engaging in fraudulent activity.
Although it is certainly the right thing to do in coming forward with any pertinent information you might have, you’ll also likely be wondering how much you can expect to be awarded. This is a difficult question to answer, particularly as this information won’t be available until the SEC is able to recover their monetary sanctions.
However, you can certainly educate yourself about how the SEC will go about calculating the amount of your whistleblower award. Read on to learn more about what a whistleblower tip is worth, and why the amount of monetary sanctions recovered will make a difference in the outcome of your case.
The Value of a Whistleblower Tip
There are several different requirements that will need to be met in order to qualify for a whistleblower award, and each of them need to be fulfilled in order to obtain an award. The most important one has to be the value of your tip.
The more valuable your information is to the success of the SEC’s investigation into the investment fraud or securities violations in question, the more you can reasonably expect to be awarded.
If you are able to provide the SEC with internal documents, financial statements, confidential information, and other physical evidence that can establish the wrongdoing, you’ll have provided invaluable information to the SEC as they conduct their investigation.
How Much Was the SEC Able to Recover?
The SEC’s claims review department will be responsible for determining your preliminary whistleblower award. This includes figuring out how valuable your tip was to the eventual success of the case. Once this has been established, you’ll need to be sure that you’ve met the other qualifying criteria.
This includes reporting your tip voluntarily, your tip being considered original, and of course, the SEC needs to be able to impose monetary sanctions against the fraudulent individual or company. If all of these conditions have been met, you will be entitled to somewhere between 10 percent and 30 percent of however much the SEC is able to recover.
The more documentation and evidence you are able to provide to the SEC, the closer you’ll get to the 30 percent mark, and though this may seem like a small difference, if the SEC was able to recover, say $25 million, you could be awarded as much as $7.5 million or as little as $2.5 million. As can be seen, the value of a whistleblower tip significantly influences the outcome of a whistleblower award.
Contact a Qualified SEC Whistleblower Lawyer
Would-be whistleblowers across the nation can speak with an experienced SEC whistleblower lawyer at Meissner Associates, free of charge, to discuss the information they have, what their next steps should be, and what to expect from a whistleblower award during their confidential tip review.
You can take advantage of this opportunity by filling out the brief contact form we have included at the bottom of this page or by giving our office a call at 1-866-764-3100.
