Labaton Sucharow Whistleblower Awarded $13 Million for Reporting Securities Violations Leading to $267 Million Enforcement Action against JPMorgan

by Labaton Sucharow

March 26, 2019

Firm Continues to Secure Historic Victories on Behalf of Anonymous Tipsters

New York, NY (March 26, 2019) – The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced awards totaling $50 million to “two whistleblowers whose high-quality information assisted the agency in bringing a successful enforcement action.” Labaton Sucharow LLP represented one of the whistleblowers, who will receive $13 million for reporting a tip to the SEC that led to a massive enforcement action charging J.P. Morgan Securities LLC (JPMS) and JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. (JPMCB) with securities violations for failing to disclose conflicts of interest to clients.

Labaton Sucharow served as counsel to the whistleblower, a J.P. Morgan executive, who cooperated in the agency’s investigation. The case, in which JPMS and JPMCB agreed to pay $267 million to settle the charges in December 2015, is one of the largest enforcement actions initiated by an SEC whistleblower since the SEC Whistleblower Program was enacted.

The landmark enforcement action brought in 2015 as a result of the whistleblowers’ tips charged J.P. Morgan with a preference to invest clients in the firm’s own proprietary investment products without properly disclosing the practice, which compromised two pillars of money management—asset allocation and the selection of fund managers—and deprived the bank’s clients of critical information to make fully informed investment decisions.

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