Make Millions As a Professional Whistleblower – Later On

In GQGordy Megroz describes an interesting career choice:

It’s a Saturday in a well-appointed room in a luxury hotel in a major American city and a man named Richard Overum has just escorted me from the lobby to brief me on my new identity. My directive: Embody a high roller. A man capable of signing a check for millions of dollars at a moment’s notice. And, most important, a man looking to make an investment. I need to look perfect, Overum explains. Because tonight, I’ll be shadowing him on a sting.

Richard Overum is not a member of law enforcement or a government official. He’s something else: a rarefied practitioner in a line of work he’s all but created for himself. He hunts businesspeople he suspects are breaking the law—a job that by virtue of oft-overlooked sections of federal law can end up paying remarkably well. Tucked into the Dodd-Frank Act, which Congress passed in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal and the economic calamity of the late aughts, are provisions meant to encourage people who spot signs of potential financial wrongdoing to come to the government with information. The incentive? If the agencies take enforcement action based on a tip resulting in sanctions in excess of $1 million, the law says, one or more whistleblowers can earn an award equal to 10 to 30 percent of what’s collected.

Whistleblower programs were established at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to manage and investigate tips, and the calculation for awards depends on multiple factors, including the value of the information in making the case. But the payouts can be enormous. Recent cases have rewarded SEC whistleblowers with $29 million, $38 million, and $104 million. Last year, the SEC cut its biggest check yet, issuing a payout of $279 million to one tipster who reportedly aided in a bribery case involving the Swedish telecom Ericsson that resulted in a more-than-billion-dollar settlement.

Between the start of the program in 2011 and the end of fiscal year 2023, the SEC has levied more than $6 billion in sanctions, and paid out close to $2 billion to whistleblowers. Overum’s share? Tens of millions, he says, between funds collected and those still pending.

The evidence he passes to whistleblower programs he gathers primarily by going undercover—persuading a would-be fraudster to reveal signs of a scheme by posing as a potential investor interested in getting in on the action. That’s why Overum and I have met in this hotel tonight: so I can join him for a meeting with someone he’s investigating.

For some time now, Overum has been compiling intel on . . .

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