Jeffrey Wigand was a vice president of research and development at the nation’s third-largest cigarette company, Brown and Williamson, which by the mid-1990s was selling more than 90 billion cigarettes a year via brands such as Kool and Viceroy.
But something didn’t sit right with him.
Wigand realized tobacco companies were purposely obscuring the truth about cigarettes, as well as engineering them to be more addictive and refusing to eliminate carcinogens. The economics were too tantalizing.
Wigand became the highest-ranking former tobacco executive to speak out against the industry. He offered testimony that helped secure a historic multibillion-dollar settlement , aided the Department of Justice’s RICO litigation against the industry, and secretly shared his insights about industry practices with the FDA. In a 1996 interview on 60 Minutes , he told the nation. The ripple effects of his courageous acts continue to this day in the decreased profits to the entire industry and mandatory warnings about addiction and cancer risk on labels for tobacco products.
Insiders have long played a vital role in righting wrongs. Confidential witnesses help prosecutors put violent criminals behind bars. Likewise, whistleblowers — who may be able to remain anonymous in some instances — help the government stop white-collar crimes, such as stealing taxpayer funds or putting the public at risk. While white-collar crimes may seem more abstract than a drug deal or violent crime, they can be devastating on a massive scale — as in the case of the tobacco industry.
Think of Karen Silkwood , who suspected health and safety violations that exposed workers to radiation poisoning, or Mark Whitacre, who told the government about a price-fixing scheme by executives at international food processing giant Archer Daniels Midland.
The U.S. government has doubled down on the vital role of these informants through federal whistleblower programs such as the False Claims Act, the SEC Whistleblower Program, the CFTC Whistleblower Program, the IRS Whistleblower Program, the NHTSA Whistleblower Program, the AML Whistleblower Program, and now a DOJ pilot whistleblower program for corporate crime .
This may sound like just a handful of one-off programs targeting specific legal violations, but they’re linked by a consistent theme — and a recognition that whistleblowers should be rewarded. (Just a few months ago, the SEC awarded three joint whistleblowers $12 million, and that’s just one of many awards last year.)
“The common thread is a complex scheme to skirt a legal requirement with massive amounts of money at stake; and it often takes place in corporate offices,” said Kate Scanlan , an experienced whistleblower lawyer and a founding attorney at Keller Grover. “It takes someone on the inside to help show the government how those kinds of legal violations are happening. The government has recognized that incentivizing corporate insiders to come forward offsets the tremendous risk these people take, and it’s a small price to pay for the invaluable information they provide the government about wrongdoing.”
The expansion of whistleblower programs — which can be traced back to the first Congress of the United States — demonstrates how much of a difference they continue to make in upholding the laws of the United States. During the past two decades in particular, the federal government has steadily introduced new programs to empower these courageous individuals to expose an expanding list of legal violations.
Our laws can seem intimidating and complex, but there really are no limits on how whistleblowers can help expose when they are violated — especially when guided by an advocate intimately familiar with whistleblower laws, Scanlan said.
“Whistleblowers have information that can help the government in virtually every government task force or priority,” she said. “The only people who don’t like whistleblowers are the people meeting in secret to fix prices across an industry, defraud the government, or otherwise work around our laws. We should all welcome whistleblowers to assist the government in exposing more violations of federal laws.”
If you are an insider with unique information about fraudulent activity, contact Keller Grover for a free and confidential consultation . Our experienced whistleblower attorneys can answer questions and work with you to develop prudent next steps. Whistleblowers who help expose fraud using established whistleblower programs may be eligible for an award.