Category: News

CFTC Whistleblower Program Improves The CFTC has issued final rules based on its previously proposed changes to the CFTC whistleblower program. The changes have left the core of the program intact while strengthening the whistleblower retaliation protections, harmonizing the rules with the SEC program and adding transparency to the process for reward claims. Young Law...

Fake News on Stocks is Real Last month, the SEC warned investors about companies using fake news to drive up stock prices. In conjunction with this warning, the SEC charged 27 public companies, firms and writers with fraud for failing to disclose paid promotion, using multiple pseudonyms for publications about the same stock and/or using...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the False Claims Act US Attorney General Jeff Sessions reaffirmed the Justice Department’s commitment to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) spoke last Monday in a speech at the Ethics and Compliance Initiative Annual Conference. Statements by President Trump before running for office ridiculing the anti-bribery law had put...

SEC Disgorgement Debated in Supreme Court The Securities and Exchange Commission defended its ability to disgorge illegal profits from wrongdoers before the Supreme Court yesterday in Kokesh v. SEC. It was Justice Neil Gorsuch’s second day of oral arguments.  An opinion is expected by the end of the term in July. The case is now...

Barclays Whistleblower Identity Protected The Justice Department is reportedly investigating efforts by Barclays CEO Jes Staley to unmask a Barclays whistleblower who sent two anonymous letters to the bank’s board of directors complaining about the hiring of a mid-level executive. Barclays reportedly asked the U.S. Postal Service for assistance in tracking down the sender of...

False Claims Act Lawsuit Over Elder Care Fraud Because we are a smaller firm, we spend a lot of energy upfront evaluating potential whistleblower cases. The importance of this process was emphasized again by a Fourth Circuit decision last month in United States ex rel. Michaels v. Agape Senior Community, Inc. (4th Cir. Feb. 14, 2017) The...

Insider Trading & Other Schemes Prevalent The former head of enforcement at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) told Reuters that there is a “massive amount of misconduct” in futures, options and swaps markets. This fraud, which includes prohibited market manipulation, insider trading, front-running and Ponzi schemes, goes undetected because of insufficient data mining...

A Win for Internal SEC Whistleblowers On a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit has affirmed the right of internal SEC whistleblowers to sue under the Dodd-Frank Act after they are retaliated against for informing their company of suspected violations of federal securities laws. The circuit split on anti-retaliation protections for internal SEC whistleblowers now consists...