Since 2003 I have maintained a lonely vigil trying to document the rare bounty payments that have been made by the SEC to whistleblowers who alert the SEC to insider trading. This week, however, the SEC's Inspector General issued a helpful report entitled "Assessment of the SEC's Bounty Program" that lays out each and every bounty paid during the life of the program.

By way of quick background, a seldom-used bounty program has been in place at the SEC for insider trading cases since 1988, when Congress optimistically passed Section 21A(e) of the ‘34 Act authorizing the SEC to award a bounty of up to 10% of the civil penalty recovered in such cases. My research identified less than a handful of bounties that had been awarded since that time, and the new IG report identifies two more recent successful claimants that I had not discovered.

The IG states that since the inception of the SEC bounty program in 1989, the SEC has paid a total of $159,537 to five claimants. The payments were as follows:

The IG explains in the report that "Claimant 4" actually received three payments (each for the 10 percent maximum amount permitted by statute) because the claimant's information led to the filing of three separate insider trading cases. A 2002 SEC Litigation Release shows that Claimant 4 is John L. Skipper of Lincoln City, Oregon, who I believe is the only claimant identified to date. The report also notes that not all bounty claimants are successful, and that the SEC has formally denied five bounty applications since the inception of the program.