In an article published by Fox Business, Phillips & Cohen partner Sean McKessy looks back on Bernie Madoff’s massive fraud scheme and sees the formation of the SEC’s robust whistleblower program as an inadvertent outcome. McKessy – who was the first Chief of the SEC Office of the Whistleblower – discusses how whistleblowers have come out on top 10 years after Madoff’s arrest:
Since Madoff was arrested on Dec. 11, 2008, much has changed at the SEC and how it handles whistleblower information. That is largely because of the SEC whistleblower program Congress created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 at the urging of then-SEC Chair Mary Schapiro.
Now whistleblowers are welcomed, protected and lauded at the SEC, and whistleblowers have gotten the message.
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As someone who helped build the SEC whistleblower program from scratch and ran it for five years, I saw first-hand how whistleblower information stopped burgeoning Madoff-type schemes and prevented companies from becoming the next Enron or WorldCom. Thanks to the SEC program, the anonymous heroes who are whistleblowers now are getting their due.
Read “Bernie Madoff’s unlikely investor contribution: Whistleblowers” on the Fox Business website.