Category: News

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has emerged victorious in a groundbreaking jury trial prosecuting a commodities trader for illegal spoofing. The jury found the high-frequency trader guilty of 12 counts of fraud and market manipulation of the futures market. It was the first criminal trial prosecuting spoofing. According to the jury, the trader improperly influenced the...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced another whistleblower award today. The reward of more than $325,000 went to a former employee of an investment firm who tipped the agency to detailed information of wrongdoing and specifically identified the individuals behind the fraudulent activity. Whistleblower Award Decreased Due to Delay As part of its press...

The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has released the latest version of its proposal for rewards to securities whistleblowers in Canada. The proposal would authorize payments of between 5 and 15 percent of the total monetary sanctions imposed and/or voluntary payments made as a result of the whistleblower’s information. The new program would pay individuals an...

This has been quite a week for settlement announcements in the world of the False Claims Act. In the past two days, the Department of Justice has announced an additional $375 million in settlements initiated by whistleblower lawsuits. This follows the earlier Novartis announcement that it would pay $390 million to resolve. Yesterday, the DOJ...

Whistleblowers provide most of the leads to the Justice Department concerning health care fraud every year. In FY 2014, 93 percent of the cases opened by the Civil Division were started by a qui tam complaint, according to the prepared remarks of Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer at the Pharmaceutical Compliance Congress...

Novartis has reportedly agreed in principle with the Department of Justice to settle a whistleblower lawsuit brought under the False Claims Act for $390 million. The complaint filed by the DOJ in 2014 alleges that the company paid kickbacks to specialty pharmacies for prescriptions involving Myfortic and Exjade. The whistleblower filed the complaint informing the...

As the CFTC’s regulation of algorithmic trading draws near, the commodities regulator also seems to have stepped up its enforcement of the Dodd-Frank Act’s ban on spoofing, which is considered a form of market manipulation. This week, the first trial in a criminal prosecution of a high frequency trader using computer algorithms to manipulate the...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed 807 cases in fiscal year 2015 for a total of $4.19 billion in disgorgement and penalties. It also paid approximately $38 million to eight whistleblowers for information provided in tips to the SEC Whistleblower Office. The annual release by the SEC highlighted a number of actions in cases...