Phillips & Cohen partner Sean McKessy tells Compliance Week about the first whistleblower award under his watch as the SEC’s inaugural chief of its whistleblower program.
Sean McKessy, who led the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower from its inception in 2012 until 2016, remembers the very first award was a straightforward fraud.
“We weren’t as concerned about the amount (of the award) as we were about getting it out quickly,” said McKessy, now a whistleblower attorney with the firm Phillips & Cohen. “We wanted to show the office had a purpose. There were quite a few people out there, I think, who would have liked to see us fail.”
Most whistleblower cases are hardly that straightforward or quick.
Read the entire article, “Blowing the whistle weighs uncertainty against moral duty,” on Compliance Week’s website (subscription required)