Instead, it disappeared.

The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2010 (S. 372) was introduced in February of 2009. The bill is summarized by congress as “A bill to amend chapter 23 of title 5, United States Code, to clarify the disclosures of information protected from prohibited personnel practices, require a statement in nondisclosure policies, forms, and agreements that such policies, forms, and agreements conform with certain disclosure protections, provide certain authority for the Special Counsel, and for other purposes.” The Senate finally passed the bill in December 2010, which was subsequently passed a few weeks later by the House of Representatives.

Following a year long editing process, The Whistleblower Protection Act finally made it to the House, only to disappear ten days later as it was being voted.

So what actually happened?

One senator slyly put an anonymous block on the bill, using a last-minute “secret-hold.” This controversial practice allows any senator, for any reason, to anonymously prevent a bill from being passed or a nomination from coming to vote.
In 2011, the senate eliminated this tradition on a 92-4 vote.

WNYC’s On the Media began an investigation, narrowing down the possible culprits to five senators. Two then stated that they did not put the secret block on the bill.

So now there’s three senators left, and nobody’s talking.

Ironically, the three possible transgressors all voted to reform the “secret-hold” practice. Republican senators Jon Kyl of Arizona, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and James Risch of Idaho all chose to reform the practice, yet are being suspected of using it.

Senator Risch’s and Senator Sessions’ offices both neither confirm nor deny their votes, but both adhere that anonymous votes should remain anonymous. Senator Kyl’s office would not make any statements, though one staffer hinted Kyl’s stance by pointing out that the bill was amended twice, and was not given nearly enough attention to on the way to the house. Kyl’s vote to get rid of the “secret-hold” practice would have been a very good cover for him, as his verbal opposition to the reform as well as his use of the secret hold before on a similar matter involving the Freedom of Information Act, strongly indicates his feelings on the bill.

After the long, seemingly fruitful journey of this bill to only be stopped in its tracks by a senator who won’t even step forward, is a major disappointment. I can’t help but think of the Schoolhouse Rocks song “I’m just a Bill.” I imagine the Whistleblower Protection Enforcement Act sitting glum on the steps of the courthouse.

Boy: Listen to those congressmen arguing! Is all that discussion and debate about you?

Bill: Yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones. Most bills never even get this far. I hope they decide to report on me favourably, otherwise I may die.

Boy: Die?

Bill: Yeah, die in committee. Oooh, but it looks like I'm gonna live! Now I go to the House of Representatives, and they vote on me.

Boy: If they vote yes, what happens?

Bill: Then I go to the Senate and the whole thing starts all over again.

Boy: Oh no!

Bill: Oh yes!

I guess all we can do now is hope and pray, while the bill sulks on the steps.

Sources:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/whistleblower-secret-hold-5370157

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s372/show

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110308/13475113403/down-to-just-3-senators-who-refuse-to-say-if-they-anonymously-killed-whistleblower-bill.shtml

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the author of the 2006 law, modeled the Whistleblower Rewards Program after the successful False Claims Act. In June, Grassley expressed his concern with the limitations of the 2006 law, which this new proposal intends to correct.

According to Grassley, the agency procedures were limiting whistleblowers’ abilities from claiming rewards:

“These regulations are good news for whistleblowers. The Commissioner made the common-sense decision of ensuring that individuals who blow the whistle on improper refund claims will be rewarded, as I intended when I wrote the law. These new regulations will help the IRS target tax fraud. This is an issue of fairness for honest taxpayers. I hope these new regulations mean the IRS has turned the corner on encouraging whistleblowers and that this program will be a success. Next, the IRS needs to finalize these regulations quickly so they will apply to all the whistleblowers who filed claims after the 2006 law and have been waiting for their awards.”

The IRS described the proposal as an amendment to 26 CFR Section 301.7623-1.

“This regulation clarifies the definitions of proceeds of amounts collected and collected proceeds for purposes of section 7623 and that the provisions of Treas. Reg. Sec. 301.7623-1(a) concerning refund prevention claims are applicable to claims under section 7623(a) and (b). In clarifying the definitions of proceeds of amounts collected and collected proceeds, this regulation provides that the reduction of an overpayment credit balance is also considered proceeds of amountscollected and collected proceeds under section 7623.”

The actual language of the text is as follows:

Sec. 301.7623-1 Rewards and awards for information relating to violations of internal revenue laws.

(a) In general--(1) Rewards and awards. When information that has been provided to the Internal Revenue Service results in the detection of underpayments of tax or the detection and bringing to trial and punishment persons guilty of violating the internal revenue laws or conniving at the same, the IRS may approve a reward under section 7623(a) in a suitable amount from the proceeds of amounts collected in cases when rewards are not otherwise provided by law, or shall determine an award under section 7623(b) from collected proceeds. (2) Proceeds of amounts collected and collected proceeds. For
purposes of section 7623 and this section, both proceeds of amounts collected and collected proceeds include: tax, penalties, interest, additions to tax, and additional amounts collected by reason of the information provided; amounts collected prior to receipt of the information if the information provided results in the denial of a claim for refund that otherwise would have been paid; and a reduction of an overpayment credit balance used to satisfy a tax liability incurred because of the information provided.

* * * * *

(g) Effective/applicability date. This section is applicable with respect to rewards paid after January 29, 1997, except the rules of paragraph (a) of this section apply with respect to rewards and awards paid after these regulations are published as final regulations in the Federal Register.

In existence for five years, the Whistleblower Reward Program has brought in an increasing amount of tips. In an annual report submitted by Congress in 2009. Whistleblowers identified 1,941 taxpayers who were each suspected of owing more than $2 million in taxes. This is a significant increase from 2008, where only 1,246 taxpayers were identified.

The IRS will be accepting written or electronic comments and requests for a public hearing until April 18, 2011.
The full text released by the IRS is located here: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2011/2011-928.htm

Sources:

F-A Mag

IowaPolitics.com

WhistleblowerBlog

The first called foul against OSHA's whistleblower program came in August, 2010, when the Government Accounting Office (GAO) concluded OSHA functioned as though its field investigators were simply overwhelmed by the scope of their job. The GAO report was sweepingly negative: “OSHA could not provide assurance that complainants were protected as intended under the various whistleblower protection statutes.”

OSHA is responsible for maintaining the Office of Whistleblower Protection Programs (OWPP). The OWPP is critical in the field: OSHA is primarily responsible for investigating 19 first-line whistleblower laws.

Critics of OSHA's investigative record argue that the concept is simple enough..if whistleblowers don't feel protected from being fired for what they know, then they are generally less willing to take a risk to share their knowledge. Even worse, OSHA's critical ability to gather safety information will be compromised, if it won't take the lead in whistleblower protection.

Less obvious in the GAO report was precisely how to remedy OSHA's glaring faults. A second and separate agency audit, this time from DOL's Office of Inspector General (OIG) ,was released in September, 2010, and used unusually blunt language against a sister agency. The GAO's stinging report alleges an array of inadequate whistleblower protections by OSHA. The GAO report, revealing the portrait of an agency with a potential bias against supporting whistleblowers, added fresh doubts to OSHA's field safety record. Among the enforcement errors, OSHA is alleged to fail to meet even its own internal whistleblower standards in a host of critical areas.

Among the leading complaints by the DOL/OIG:

• Almost 80% of the agency's whistleblower investigations failed at least one element of OSHA's own Whistleblower Investigations Manual.
• Critics believe OSHA's 2% merited case findings of retaliation complaints was likely too low.
• Final rulings, without conducting minimal face-to-face interviews, occurred in almost half of OSHA's whistleblower investigations.

Conclusion: Faulting OSHA's Internal Culture

Worrisome to many experts in the whistleblower field is wonder if OSHA may have simply developed a culture of disconcern toward internal reforms. Ironically, months before the scathing audits, an internal OSHA memo addressed this potential tone deafness.

Subsequent testimony before Congress detailed OSHA's apparently lax attitude toward whistleblower protections. Representatives of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) have alleged OSHA's handling of industry whistleblowers was not isolated to a few cases. Instead, PEER believes OSHA's inattention to internal industry reports reflects OSHA's own attitudes toward its own potential whistleblowers”

“OSHA does not effectively protect workers who report health and safety hazards or other violations and dangers. Moreover, OSHA does not protect its own specialists from retaliation for raising health and safety issues or concerns about the consequences of OSHA’s own actions – or inaction.” March 4, 2010 “OSHA Listens” Stakeholder Session OSHA Docket # OSHA-2010-0004."

PEER has also staked out its position that OSHA can no longer be trusted to watch after whistleblowers. Instead, the group now advocates removing whistleblower investigations from the department altogether.

Sources:
"Complainants DId Not Always Receive Appropriate Investigations Under the Whistleblower Protection Program." http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/reports/oa/2010/02-10-202-10-105.pdf
"OSHA Must Address Crippling Weaknesses in Whistleblower Protection" http://peer.org/docs/osha/3_4_10_PEER_OSHA_Listens_testimony.pdf
"Whistleblower Protection Program: Better Data and Improved Oversight Would Help Ensure Program Quality and Consistency" http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-106

This article is brought to you by the QTT, the epicenter for whistleblowers and people interested in the False Claims Act, Qui Tam Provisions, and Medicare and Medicaid fraud. To discuss a potential case, please call Eric Young at 1 (800) 590-4116.

In the U.S. whistleblowers cannot be fired nor punished in their field for blowing the whistle. Under the most recent law protecting whistleblowers, the Dodd-Frank Act (the new Financial Reform bill), employers cannot “‘discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass, directly or indirectly, or in any other manner discriminate against, a whistle-blower in the terms and conditions of employment because of any lawful act done by the whistle-blower’” (for more information on the new U.S. law see “New Financial Reform Law Provides Incentives for Whistleblowers”). Because of these stringent protections, other countries are modeling after the U.S. law. However, it is not only the protections that the U.S. offers whistleblowers, but the monetary incentives that make the U.S. system a good model. In cases that involve recoveries of $1 million or more, the whistleblower must receive a minimum of 10 percent to a maximum of 30 percent of the recovery. (In order to receive a reward the recovery must total $1 million or more.) This means that the lowest possible reward a whistleblower can reap is $100,000.

Because of the advantages of the U.S. qui tam law, some lawmakers in other countries, such as the UK, would like similar protections and rewards for their citizens. It appears that the most recent law protecting whistleblowers in the UK is the Public Disclosure Act 1998, which amends the Employment Rights Act 1996. Under the 1998 Act, citizens can disclose illegal activity including, “a criminal offence; the breach of a legal obligation; a miscarriage of justice; a danger to the health or safety of any individual; damage to the environment; or deliberate covering up of information tending to show any of the above five matters.” Under Part V, “Protection from suffering detriment in employment,” of this law, 47B on “Protected disclosures” states that, “A worker has the right not to be subjected to any detriment by any act, or any deliberate failure to act, by his employer done on the ground that the worker has made a protected disclosure.” Detriment includes a range of punishments including “denial of promotion, facilities or training opportunities which the employer would otherwise have offered.” In this case, a whistleblower in the UK cannot be punished by his employer for whistleblowing if the whistleblower has made a protected disclosure. However, it appears that under these laws, whistleblowers are protected but not rewarded.

Seeing that rewards are what push many to become whistleblowers, UK government officials have questioned whether it should provide such incentives to its citizens. In the “Asset Recovery Action Plan” the Home Office of the UK presents arguments for and against enacting a program similar to the U.S.’s qui tam under the False Claims Act (FCA). Some promising features of the qui tam law that would support the creation similar program include:
• Whistleblowing laws in the U.S. have been “strikingly successful, particularly in defence and healthcare sectors, with many billions of dollars raised annually.”
• “FCA recoveries far exceed the cost of prosecuting fraud—it has been estimated that for every dollar the federal government invests in investigating and prosecuting these case[s], it receives $15 back.”
• It is believed that the law allows for cases to be brought to the attention of the government that otherwise may not have been reported.
• It is believed that, because of qui tam provisions, companies are more likely to comply with the law and avoid committing fraud.
These are advantages to the law in the U.S. that could influence UK policymakers to attempt to create a similar law that would be effective in the UK. However, there are obstacles to qui tam that would require the creation of a similar yet different law that would suit the UK. Qui tam types of provisions have existed since 1790 in the U.S., whereas they would be new to the UK. Legislative differences in U.S. and UK laws would make a law similar to the U.S.’s qui tam hard to implement in the UK because of how unusual it would be in the UK system. Additionally, “Some organizations representing the interests of whistleblowers in the UK have been skeptical about the Qui Tam approach, arguing it would discredit the practice generally.” Because of these similarities and differences the UK government has welcomed debate on the creation of a law similar to the U.S. qui tam law.

This more open debate has sparked further knowledge of whistleblowing and U.S. whistleblowing laws in the UK as it has been reported in The Guardian and other news sources throughout the country. The UK government has not changed its present law, but is certainly on the way to offering a better incentive to blow the whistle.

Sources:
“Asset Recovery Action Plan.” Home Office, the National Archives. 24 May 2007.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2007-asset-recovery/asset-recovery-consultation.pdf.
“Asset Recovery Action Plan: A Consultation Document.” Home Office. May 2007.
http://www.lccsa.org.uk/assets/documents/consultation/asset-recovery-consultation.pdf.
“Employment Rights Act 1996.” The National Archives.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/contents.
Henning, Peter J. “Come Blow Your Horn for the S.E.C.” The New York Times
DealBook Blog. 26 July 2010. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/come-blow-your-horn-to-the-s-e-c/.
Laytons Solicitors. “Whistleblowing.” UK Employment Law. 2005.
http://www.roydens.co.uk/content40.htm.
“Public interest Disclosure Act 1998.” The National Archives.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/23/contents.
Walker, Peter. “Fraud whistleblowers could get cash rewards.” Guardian.co.uk.
24 May 2007. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/may/24/ukcrime.immigrationpolicy.
Wylie, Ian. “Whistleblowing that pays.” Guardian.co.uk Money Blog. 1 Feb. 2008.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2008/feb/01/whistleblowingthatpays.

Strangely enough, while Congress passed laws to protect whistleblowers, it has not extended the same protections to its own employees.  Because legislative branch employees are not protected under the same laws, they may be less inclined to blow the whistle, for fear of losing their jobs or potential lawsuits.  Senator Chuck Grassley  (R-IA) (see previous article) is trying to change the status quo to allow Congressional employees to speak up without fear of being punished.  Last year, Sen. Grassley and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced the Congressional Whistleblower Protection Act to amend the Congressional Accountability Act to allow legislative branch employees to enjoy the same whistleblower protections as executive branch employees and others.  Grassley justify his Act not only because it protects the whistleblowers, but also because it allows for a more transparent government that abides by the laws.  He stated that “‘Compliance isn’t just something to check off a list once, but it should be a daily effort to be sure the Senate is abiding by the law.’”  In order to ensure that the government does abide by the law, whistleblowers should be able to report on wrongful activities in Congress without the worry of losing their jobs or facing lawsuits.  According to Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) “Being a whistleblower takes courage…Any federal employee, including those who work in the legislative branch, who sees wrongful and unethical conduct in the workplace, should be able to report such conduct without fear of losing their job.”

Legislative branch employees are able to voice concerns to the Ethics Committee in the House or Senate or the to Office of Compliance.  However, they are not protected if they blow the whistle.  Grassley’s Act would provide them with protection.  Act’s similar to Grassley’s have been offered in the previous 3 Congresses but have never come out of Committee.  Grassley’s Act is stuck in Committee now as well.  Despite the fact that the Office of Compliance has called for such protections to be extended to legislative branch employees for more than 10 years, no such Act has been passed.

Even though this seems like striking news, this is not a new issue.  You may be questioning why you have not heard of this issue before.  Part of the reason is that Congressional employees are not keen to blow the whistle when not protected by the law.  Additionally, they may be uncomfortable lobbying Congress for the law to be extended to them.  According to Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight, this is due to loyalty.  People working for someone in Congress are loyal to the Congressperson they represent and therefore are less likely to blow the whistle on inappropriate activity.  So, despite the fact that the Act is being offered by Grassley, it is questionable as to which will trump: loyalty to the employer or the need to report wrongdoings.

If Grassley’s Act makes it out of Committee and was voted on and passed, would Congressional employees blow the whistle more often, or will loyalty still stand in the way?

NOTE: The Qui Tam Team has written a News Article about this issue.  See “Congressional Employees Do Not Receive Whistleblower Protections” at http://quitamteam.com/news/legal-news/678-congressional-employees-do-not-receive-whistleblower-protection

In related news see:
Blog: “Why It’s Worth It to Be a Whistleblower” at http://quitamteam.com/blog/worth-whistleblower/#comments
News: “Grassley Promoting ‘The Value of Whistleblowers’ by writing to Drug Companies at http://quitamteam.com/news/top-headlines/661-senator-grassely-promoting-the-value-of-whistleblowers-by-writing-to-drug-companies

Sources:
Lovely, Erika. “Congress delays on whistleblowers.” Politico. 17 August 2010. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41178.html.
“S. 474: Congressional Whistleblower Protection Act of 2009.” Govtrack.us. 111^th Congress. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-474.

This article is brought to you by the QTT, the epicenter for whistleblowers and people interested in the False Claims Act, Qui Tam Provisions, and Medicare and Medicaid fraud. To discuss a potential case, please call Eric Young at 1 (800) 590-4116.

[u]nprecedented government spending, recent amendments to the FCA, increased fraud enforcement budgets and priorities, skyrocketing FCA recoveries, state legislative and enforcement activities, and the sheer volume of ongoing government investigations and pending qui tam actions suggest that the FCA will remain the fastest growing area of federal litigation.

One of the most important factors contributing to FCA mania is lawmakers' obsession with tweaking the Act. The FCA has already been amended twice in the first six months of 2010, and Congress is hankering to amend the FCA once again.

Congress passed the Fraud Enforcement Recovery Act ("FERA'') in May 2009. FERA made some of the most significant amendments to the FCA in 20 years.  FERA already expanded protections for agents or contractors who blow the whistle. The latest version of the Financial Reform Bill would expand the scope of protected whistleblower conduct to include not only "efforts to stop 1 or more violations"  but also lawful behavior "in furtherance of an action'' under the FCA.

Massive outlays of federal dollars combined with Congress's FCA infatuation guarantee that these types of cases will stay hot. 2010 may well be the year of titanic clashes over the FCA, so grab a front row seat as the dollars fly!

This article is brought to you by the QTT, the epicenter for whistleblowers and people interested in the False Claims Act, Qui Tam Provisions, and Medicare and Medicaid fraud. To discuss a potential case, please call Eric Young at 1 (800) 590-4116.

18 U.S.C. sec. 1514A of SOX protects corporate whistleblowers by providing them with the remedy of a civil action in the event of retaliation by their employer.  Publicly traded companies, as well as their contractors, subcontractors, and agents, are prohibited from retaliating against a whistleblower who participates in an investigation or participates in an action stemming from violations of Federal law relating to fraud against shareholders.

If a whistleblower does suffer some sort of retaliation, she has two options depending on the amount of time that has elapsed. She could file a complaint with the Secretary of Labor, or, in the event that the Secretary of Labor has not issued a decision within 180 days of the filing of the complaint and the whistleblower has not done anything in bad faith to cause the delay, the whistleblower can go ahead and file a lawsuit in federal district court. As a side note, there is a special loophole created for whistleblower plaintiffs here. Normally, in order to get into federal district court the amount in controversy must be $75,000 or more. For whistleblowers alleging discrimination, this requirement is waived.

The proposed financial reform legislation, which may be headed to the Senate floor this week, could significantly expand whistleblower protections. Under both the House version of the bill as well as that proposed by Senator Chris Dodd, the SEC would be authorized to reward whistleblowers for any insider trading violations (not just those related to securities, as the law currently stands). In addition, the whistleblower's share of the SEC sanction would be increased to 30% from its current 10%. This is a significant jump, putting it in line with the maximum recoveries available to qui tam relators and IRS whistleblowers.

Blowing the whistle is by no means without risk. The whistleblower should take some comfort, however, in the fact that there are several protections available, and stronger protections likely are on the way. Recent events in the financial world, such as the Goldman Sachs short selling debacle, are sure to provide an impetus to Congress to reinforce whistleblower protections in this area.

This article was sponsored by The Qui Tam Team, the epicenter for whistleblowers and people interested in the False Claims Act, Qui Tam Provisions, and Medicare and Medicaid fraud. To discuss a potential case, please call Eric Young at 1 (800) 590-4116.

Although it doesn't necessarily tug at the heartstrings the way stories of trapped miners do,  fraud by by companies extracting coal and other natural resources from federal and Indian lands costs taxpayers millions of dollars in lost royalties. The typical situation is one in which a resource extractor removes more of a resource than it discloses to the government by falsifying records.

According to testimony given by Acting Inspector General for the Department of the Interior Mary L. Kendall before Congress regarding bill H.R. 3534, nearly $700 million has been recovered from 25 companies, much of it through qui tam cases. H.R. 3534, the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act, is a bill that would "provide greater efficiencies, transparency, returns, and accountability in the administration of Federal mineral and energy resources by consolidating administration of various Federal energy minerals management and leasing programs into one entity to be known as the Office of Federal Energy and Minerals Leasing of the Department of the Interior."

A perfect example of a False Claims Act violation by a resource extractor met its apex in December 2009, when Chevron agreed to pay $45 million to the United States to resolve claims that it knowingly underpaid royalties for natural gas extracted from federal and Indian land. As one of the assistant attorneys general involved in the case observed, royalties are an important source of income for Native Americans, the federal government, and various states. When companies underpay royalties, they usually end up cheating everyone to some degree. It's important for whistleblowers to help ensure that resource extractors don't take advantage of the complex nature of their business. As the demand increases for certain natural resources, such as natural gas, there are sure to be more opportunities for fraud.

The case is Graham County Soil and Water Conservation District v. U.S ex rel. Wilson, 08-304.

A variety of interested parties filed amicus briefs in the case, and it would have been quite a scene if all of them had ended up in the same room, considering some of them are usually fighting each other. Parties filing amicus briefs in support of the Petitioner (Graham County Soil and Water Conservation District) included good ol' boys (State of Alabama), Green Mountain Boys (State of Vermont), several other states, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the American Hospital Association. Hopefully the states got to share some litigation pointers with each other before they went home to file their latest False Claims Act cases against the hospitals and drug makers! But seriously, we're sure a good time was had by all.

Unfortunately for the amici brief writers (and certain fragile Supreme Court egos) the decision is not likely to remain law for very long. In the new health care reform legislation, an amendment to the FCA was included which clarifies that private lawsuits under the FCA are barred only if the public disclosure was federal in nature, i.e., from a proceeding in which the federal government is a party or from a federal report, etc. This amendment appears to overrule the decision in the Graham County case, and Justice Stevens acknowledged the law in a footnote. A fight may still loom over whether the new law is retroactive to pending cases or state reports/audits made publicly available prior to the health care bill's passage.

The upshot of all this is that there is movement on the part of legislators to bar whistleblower lawsuits that are deemed "parasitic" and are based essentially on a relator's luck of the draw in hearing about the misspending of funds. Until the issue of whether Graham County applies to pending cases involving state/local reports/audits, it may be wise to avoid getting entangled in this tricky area.

The study, conducted by accounting professors Jacob Rose and James Hunton, has found that landmark regulations designed to prevent financial fraud by relying on anonymous whistleblowers are dysfunctional and ineffective. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (affectinonaetly referred to as SOX) has had unfortunate unintended consequences. Specifically, the audit committees of publicly traded companies required by SOX fail to investigate tips from anonymous whistleblowers relative to named ones--particularly when the whistleblower's information poses a threat to corporate directors.

Professors Rose and Hunton conducted an experiment in which 83 highly experienced audit committees examined whistleblowers' allegations of corporate reporting malfeasance, and were then asked to allocate resources for investigations. According to Professor Rose,

We concluded that audit committee members who evaluate whistle-blowing allegations and determine whether or not allegations should be investigated treat anonymous and non-anonymous allegations very differently. Audit committee members find anonymous allegations to be less credible than non-anonymous allegations. As a result, audit committee members often choose not to investigate an anonymous allegation, even when the allegation indicates very serious threats to the integrity of the financial reporting system. When an identical allegation is not anonymous, audit committees allocate significant resources to the investigation of the allegation. In brief, anonymous allegations appear to be ignored in many cases.

The anonymous whistleblowers study seems to offer strong support for the conclusion reached by the authors of the "Who Blows the Whistle on Corporate Fraud?" study. One of the conclusions of that study was that there need to be more avenues of financial compensation available to whistleblowers, considering the high personal, professional, and pecuniary stakes whistleblowers face. If the corporate audit committees required by SOX are ignoring anonymous whistleblowers, then whistleblowers need to have more external outlets through which they can both disclose fraud and receive a monetary incentive.