According to Stephen
Bornstein in 2009, Linda Almonte, a
division vice president at JPMorgan in San Antonio, TX, discovered substantial
errors and omissions in the paperwork supporting almost $200 million worth of
credit card judgments the bank was selling to a debt collection agency. Nearly
half the files were missing proofs of judgment and almost a quarter of the
debts were overstated.
When she told her boss of her discovery, Almonte got no
kudos for spotting the problems and was told instead to keep the file defects
to herself. On principle, she refused to go along with the sale and was
subsequently fired.
Standing up to JPM cost Linda Almonte more than her job. She
spent the next two years trying unsuccessfully to interest any bank regulator
in her case against JPM and to find work at other banks in the San Antonio
area. She eventually lost her house and had to move her family to another town.
To this day, Almonte has not come close to matching her salary at JPM.
What she has done, however, is file a claim with the SEC
under its new whistleblower program, which offers bounties to employees who
expose suspected violations of federal law by their employers that eventually
lead to settlements of $1 million or more…..
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