Whistleblower activity is on the rise under both Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 15 USC §78u-6 (Dodd-Frank), and Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 18 USC §1514A (SOX), which protect individuals who report conduct they reasonably believe constitutes a violation of federal law relating to financial, securities or shareholder fraud. On Nov. 16, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Office of the Whistleblower (OWB) released its Annual Report on the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Program, in which OWB reports 3,923 tips from whistleblowers in 2015—an increase of 8 percent over 2014 and an increase of 30 over 2012, the first year of the program.

The report also highlights that OWB paid more than $37 million to eight whistleblowers in 2015. See U.S. Sec. & Exch. Comm’n, 2015 Annual Report to Congress on the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Program (2015), https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower/reportspubs/annual-reports/owb-annual-report-2015.pdf. Likewise, according to recent figures released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) which enforces the whistleblower provisions of SOX, there was a 7 percent increase in the number of SOX whistleblower cases filed in fiscal year 2015 as compared to fiscal year 2014. See U.S. Dept. of Labor, Whistleblower Investigation Data: FY2005-FY2015 (2015), http://www.whistleblowers.gov/wb_data_FY05-15.pdf.

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