The whistleblower may have been the indirect source of the SEC’s information, but he did not report directly to the SEC until the agency had already built a case.
The SEC properly denied an award to a whistleblower who reported information to a journalist and the DOJ but waited a year to tell the SEC. In the meantime, the SEC had already built a case around the information, which it learned indirectly from the journalist’s stories and the DOJ. A D.C. Circuit panel majority reasoned that the belated tip did not assist the SEC’s enforcement efforts, even if the petitioner was the original source of the underlying information (Doe v. SEC, No. 25-1152 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 9, 2026)).
The opinion was reissued about a week after having been placed under seal.
Background. The petitioner (Doe) contacted a journalist with evidence that his employer was engaged in a foreign bribery scheme. The journalist gave the information to the Department of Justice and published stories about the bribery. The journalist passed along the DOJ’s advice that Doe should contact the SEC, but Doe waited over a year before doing so. In the meantime, the SEC spent months building a case based on information it received from the DOJ and the journalist’s stories.
Doe applied for a whistleblower award under Dodd-Frank, which allows an award only if the whistleblower “voluntarily provided original information to the Commission that led to the successful enforcement of the covered judicial or administrative...
In a 2017 piece in The New York Times, voting expert Ari Berman wrote, “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed tactics that prevented blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups from voting. But fo...