Whistleblowing can be it's own business model, just do a google search for Ven-a-care.<p>Ven-a-care is a small pharmacy down in the Florida Keys. A few decades ago, it started to notice that the price it was paying for certain drug was <i>very</i> different from what the gov't thought they cost. Gov't price reporting is incredibly strict in pharma due to past mucking with the numbers.<p>So they started a lawsuit which was picked up by the DOJ.<p>Then they did it again, and again, and again.<p>Last I saw, they've racked up almost $600M in whistleblower awards.[1]<p>[1]<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/id/41491563" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/id/41491563</a>
Interesting to see the SEC finally grow some teeth, between the recent ICO enforcement actions, Theranos penalty, and now this. When I was in financial software (06-07) they were basically a joke; my employer had developed some software to help enforce a (relatively obscure) regulation and tried to sell it to them, and they were completely indifferent. Kind of a welcome change, if they manage to get people to be more interested in actual productive activity than fleecing dumber investors, but it'll take a while to change a culture.
This program is a great example how setting the right incentives can destabilize a criminal conspiracy. It’s also worth noting that “traditional” law enforcement in white collar crimes is essentially the same: the possibility of criminal proceedings almost always outweighs the sort of incentives a corporation can offer lower-level employees. Would you risk jail time as a bookkeeper earning a 5-figure salary at #bigCorp Inc?<p>It’s arguably the same dynamic now befalling the presidential administration, only that the salaries are even lower than in the private sector, and you’re almost certainly looking at 6-digit bills from your lawyer just because working in the building will make you a potential witness.
Just don't dream of whistle blowing against the government itself or a federal contractor. Then you'll be utterly destroyed for such insolence.
While I appreciate a criminal getting caught, these types of systems that incentives private citizens spying and reporting on one another are bothersome on many levels.
Pump-and-dump telegram groups are basically done if their members see a get-rich-quick opportunity from the SEC which surpasses the promised returns of the pump-and-dump scheme.
Does the SEC have a line item in its budget for whistleblower awards? If so what do they do if there are a lot of cases to pay out? Can they run out of money for these things? I'd love to know what that process looks like.
> By law, the SEC protects the confidentiality of whistleblowers and does not disclose information that might directly or indirectly reveal a whistleblower’s identity.<p>I wonder if they tell the IRS?
In any other industry you have to be happy to not get your life ruined as whistle-blower but in banking we again have to give them a huge amount of money to do something. It really bothers me. Why do we have to give millions of dollars? Anywhere else you would get a small reward or nothing.
They need to come down on Tesla. Musk's tweets/lies have driven the stock up to an established automaker's market cap.<p>The only problem is, Tesla is no where near profitable (they've lost money nearly every quarter except for two or three, I believe. And in those quarters, the profit was very small compared to other quarterly losses) as either of these companies, and the cash burn isn't stabilizing as they attempt to scale, it's increasing.<p>China/Europe deliveries have collapsed to start 2018. Bloomberg is tracking VIN assignments and pegs weekly production to 750 vehicles a week; that's only 25% to what Musk said they'd be doing by 2018.03.30.<p>S and X production during the M3 ramp up is reduced, based on channel checks.<p>Deliveries to regions in the US are staggered as M3's require an extensive amount of re-work before and after being received by a customer. Simply put - they want to fulfill all of their California orders to cut down on logistic costs/take payment, but their delivery centers can't handle the amount of service/re-work that would be required for all the new M3 owners.<p>This quarter should be an absolute bloodbath for TSLA - the end has already begun.