Big bucks are on offer for traders willing to spill the beans on fraud. But will the rewards work, asks Philip McBride Johnson? For some people, breaching the omertà may not be worth the price.
With considerable fanfare, the new US financial reform legislation creates at both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission a new program where persons having knowledge of wrongdoing may alert the agency and receive a hefty cash award if the matter is prosecuted successfully.
This whistleblower provision is meant to open a new...