On May 2, 2017, the Securities and Exchanges Commission issued a Dodd-Frank whistleblower award of more than $500,000 to an unidentified company employee.  According to the SEC, the individual reported information that prompted an SEC investigation and resulted enforcement action by the agency.  Jane Norberg, Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower stated that the employee reported “hard-to-detect violations of the securities law.”

This is the second whistleblower award issued by the SEC in the past week, as the SEC just awarded a whistleblower nearly $4 million for submitting information relating to “serious misconduct” by an organization.  The SEC reported that approximately $154 million has been awarded to 44 whistleblowers, who provided “original and useful information that led to a successful enforcement action,” under its bounty program to date.

Based on the SEC’s recent whistleblower awards, it appears that the agency will continue to issue whistleblower bounty awards under the Trump administration.