Whistleblower Lawyer Blog

The new IRS Whistleblower Program for tax whistleblowers will be featured for the first time at the nation's leading conference for estate planners, the Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning.

The Heckerling Institute is known as the country's "leading conference for estate planners, including attorneys, trust officers, accountants, insurance advisors, and wealth management professionals." This is the 46th Annual Institute, named after late Professor Philip E. Heckerling, founder of the University of Miami Law School’s Estate Planning Institute. The conference will take place from January 9-13, 2012.

The IRS Whistleblower Program will be the topic of a special session, "Anyone Can Whistle--What You Should Know About the Newly Revised IRS Whistleblower Program."

For years, Martin E. Basson, who is an Attorney-Advisor/Senior Analyst for the IRS National Whistleblower Office, has chaired a program for the Institute. I will join Marty and the IRS Whistleblower Office's Dawn M. Applebaum, for what I understand is the Institute's first program discussing the new IRS Whistleblower Program.

Marty Basson is known as the IRS Whistleblower Office's expert on estate and gift tax issues. Dawn Applebaum, a Management Analyst with the Whistleblower Office, has been excellent in other programs such as the Whistleblower Law Symposium and the IRS Whistleblower Boot Camp. I will be the tax whistleblower attorney on the panel, as we discuss this "developing area of tax practice, and the practical realities of developing and pursuing tax whistleblower claims."

Tax whistleblowers are making increasing use of the IRS Whistleblower Program to address tax fraud, tax evasion, and other violations of tax law. The estate tax area is fertile ground for these tax whistleblower claims, so this program should be especially interesting.

When the CFTC announced its final whistleblower rules yesterday, it answered many questions about how the new CFTC whistleblower program will work.

David Meister, the CFTC's Director of the Division of Enforcement, provided this summary according to the unofficial transcript our firm prepared of yesterday's CFTC public meeting:

The Commission will pay awards to eligible whistleblowers who provide original information to the Commission leading to a successful Commission enforcement action and the imposition of monetary sanctions in excess of $1 million.

To be award eligible, a whistleblower is not required, under our recommendation-- a whistleblower is not required to report his information internally to his employer. Staff believes that such a requirement would deter some whistleblowers from coming forward, which would undermine congressional intent.

Continue reading "How the New CFTC Whistleblower Rules Will Operate" »

The final whistleblower rules of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are being announced now at a CFTC open meeting. Like the SEC, the CFTC has rejected any provision that whistleblowers be required first to report internally the violations in question, but will treat internal reporting as a "positive" consideration in its awards.

The alternative pushed by business would have required all CFTC whistleblowers first to risk career suicide by reporting the boss’s wrongdoing to the boss himself.

Industry’s approach would have made the Commission the laughing stock of law enforcement, since no rational person with a career and a mortgage would risk reporting even major fraud with that requirement.

Fortunately, the CFTC put first its responsibility to protect the public, and is taking seriously its law enforcement duties by seeking to root out major frauds.

Madoff, Stanford, and the other major frauds of the past decade prove that internal compliance programs cannot protect the public. That is why Congress in Dodd-Frank demanded the first meaningful SEC and CFTC whistleblower programs.

We applaud the CFTC on this important stand, and look forward to reviewing the text of the final rules when made available.

Continue reading "CFTC Announces Final Whistleblower Rules, Rejects "Mandatory Internal Reporting" by Whistleblowers" »

When qui tam whistleblower cases under the False Claims Act are "declined" by the Department of Justice, the whistleblower or "relator" is authorized to pursue the case on the government's behalf.

The DOJ statistics below show that these declined cases have generated more than $97 million in recoveries for taxpayers since 1987, the year after the modern False Claims Act was born.

These facts dispel any notion that the Justice Department has sufficient resources to pursue all meritorious cases. Some of the more notable False Claims Act recoveries were achieved by private attorneys pursuing these "declined" cases.

A list of these declined cases that have brought almost $100 million into the U.S. Treasury is below. This amount is "larger than the sum of all salaries paid to members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate last year," as observed by Pat Burns of Taxpayers Against Fraud.

Continue reading "Qui Tam Whistleblower Cases Produced $97 Million in Recoveries After Being Declined by Justice Department" »