A Law Firm Just for Whistleblowers - Poppy Alexander

​We’re delighted to welcome back Poppy Alexander, a founding partner at the law firm Whistleblower Partners, a law firm dedicated to representing whistleblowers reporting fraud and misconduct in:

• Healthcare
• Procurement
• Securities and Commodities
• Taxes
• Money Laundering and Sanctions Evasion
• Customs
• Environmental Remediation
• Vehicle Safety

Poppy represents whistleblowers and government entities in qui tam lawsuits, as well as under the various agency whistleblower programs including those administered by the Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission, FinCEN, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Department of Transportation.  Poppy’s practice focuses on issues of international corruption and financial misconduct, with a specialty in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering cases.  She writes and speaks regularly about emerging topics in financial fraud, including sanctions violations, SPACs, and cryptocurrency.
​
We last spoke with Poppy back in July of 2022 when she had already established an impressive track record representing whistleblowers at Constantine Cannon. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2012. She was the co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and an active participant in the Human Rights Clinic, working on issues related to corporate accountability for human rights violations in Africa and military abuses in Southeast Asia. She was awarded the Dean’s Award for Community Leadership in recognition for her contributions to the school community. Poppy has been named to the Super Lawyers Rising Stars list every year since 2016. Prior to law school, Poppy worked on election reform issues before beginning graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied political and critical theory.

We’ve invited Poppy to talk about her new work, and her new firm, Whisteblower Partners.
​
Topics Discussed Include:

• Poppy’s new law firm, Whistleblower Partners. Why Poppy left her old firm to establish this new legal partnership in March 2024.  She describes a comprehensive approach to whistleblowers and not just file cases.
• The laws Whistleblower Partners uses in environmental cases and how they have changed since the episode we published in July 2023. Qui tam False Claims Act, SEC, IRS, Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS), and various wildlife protection laws.
• Examples of Whistleblower Partners victories.
• Pitfalls of whistleblowing and filing lawsuits and administrative tips programs.

 
Further Reading / Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• Mighty Earth  vs. JBS in protecting the Brazilian rainforest
• The Securities and Exchange Commission’s 90th birthday

Transcript

Greg Williams: 0:10

Thanks for joining us for another episode of climate money watchdog where we investigate and report on how federal dollars are being spent on mitigating climate change and protecting the environment. We're a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that does not accept advertisers or sponsors. So we can only do this work with your support. Please visit us at claim money watchdog.org To learn more about us and consider making a donation. My name is Greg Williams and I learned to investigate and report on waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending. While working at the project on government oversight, or Pogo 30 years ago, I learned to do independent research as well as to work with confidential informants or whistleblowers to uncover things like overpriced spare parts, like the infamous $435 hammers, and expensive military weapons systems that did not work as advertised. I was taught by my co host Tina razor, who founded Bobo in 1981, and founded climb money watchdog with me a few years ago, Dena has spent 40 years investigating and sometimes recovering millions of dollars wasted by the Defense Department and other branches of government. She did this at Pogo, as an independent journalist, as an author and as a professional investigator. Our guest tonight is papi Alexander, a founding member of the law firm whistleblower part a law firm dedicated representing whistleblowers and reporting fraud and misconduct in a wide spectrum of variants including health care, procurement, securities and commodities taxes, money laundering and sanctions, evasion, customs, environmental remediation and vehicle safety. Poppy represents whistleblowers and government entities in key Tom lawsuits, otherwise known as false claims suit, as well as under the various agency whistleblower programs, including those administered by the Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission FinCEN Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Department of Transportation. Poppy's practice focuses on issues of in international corruption and financial misconduct, with a specialty in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering cases. She writes and speaks regularly about emergency topics in financial fraud, including sanctions violations, SBA sees and cryptocurrency. we last spoke to Bobbi back in July of 2022, when she had already established an impressive track record representing whistleblowers at Constantine cannon. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2012. She was the CO editor in chief of the Harvard civil rights civil liberties Law Review, and an active participant in the Human Rights Clinic. Working on issues related to corporate accountability for human rights violations in Africa and military abuses in Southeast Asia, she was awarded the Dean's Award for Community Leadership in recognition of her contributions to the school community. Poppy has been named to the Super Lawyers rising stars list every year since 2016. And prior law school, having worked on election reform issues before beginning graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied political and critical theory. We're delighted to have Poppy here tonight to talk about her new work and her new firm. Whistleblower Parker's Deena. Is there anything else you'd like to say about why we're excited to have Poppy with us? Well,

Dina Rasor: 3:50

we're excited because one of the other people in the firm named Eric cavion. I started working with back in the early 90s, off and on for years, you know, swapping ideas and stuff actually doing a little investigation when I had Bellman and razor when we were doing as investigators. And I'm really excited because they started this was a blur of partners, they actually now I've seen Eric go from one law firm to another law firm. And of course, he's been wildly successful. And I also got to meet Poppy and some of the other people. And now they it's sort of like the, the A Team sort of all got together and they started this new firm, whistleblower partners. And I wrote what I really love about it is it's not just I work I've worked with key tam lawyers for years, and I helped get the law changed back in 86. So that's how long I've been messing with lawyers on this law. And what I really like about your approach is I would just get lawyers who would get in a whole bunch of was Laura's filed bunch of cases and throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. And it is devastating to get somebody to go through and file a case. Thinking that, yes, this lawyers got as much passion as I do. And when it starts to get a little hard, they leave. Or they say we can't do it, or there's a flaw in the case. And I used to sit there and say, as an investigator, no flaws in the case, you just don't want to do this, because it looks like it's going to be hard. And so what I really like about what Eric and Poppy and everyone else in the firm have done is they've been able to, they've been able to have an attitude of we're going to work with whistleblower partners is really interesting. So they want to partner with the whistleblower, which is really what I've always tried to do, too. I mean, I've I've quit law firms when they don't treat my whistleblowers, right. And because it's so hard, and what I'm really pleased about is now they're going to be looking not just at individual cases, but you know, is the SEC thing working, or is this working, what's working and not working. And Eric has such an excellent reputation in Washington, he can get people and justice departments to fix. And so I'm, I'm really pleased. And then and that's really on my first question is tell us about the new firm? Well,

Poppy Alexander: 6:23

Dina, first of all, I think we should hire you as our marketing team. So thank you, I mean, all the threads that you're pulling on right now are exactly why we started our new firm. And I just want to thank you both so much for having me on to talk about it. Because it's, it's a project I'm really excited about. I mean, just starting with what you said, I have the best colleagues in the world. And I know I have the best colleagues in the world. And obviously, that makes all the difference in how we approach everything. And launching a law firm is not easy. Everyone told me it's not easy. It turns out they were right. It's not easy. I'm not sure I would have done it with any other group of people out there. But I am lucky to be working with the people I'm working with, who all share the same approach that I do. You know what, what we talk about is the whole whistleblower approach, because whistleblowing is very hard. It's a long process we're working with, you know, folks who are oftentimes going through the hardest, or one of the hardest things they've ever experienced in their entire lives. Oftentimes, they're dealing with retaliation, they're dealing with all these other challenges, right. And it's not enough to just be their lawyer, and we never are just their lawyer, we're oftentimes the person they might be in close communication with, about, you know, whatever this particular thing is that they're coming forward about, we're working with them through a really challenging period, and we absolutely recognize it. And you hit the nail on the head with when you identified why we call ourselves whistleblower partners. We are our clients partners, we're not just their lawyers, and we put that name on purpose. And we are we are each other's partners, obviously. And that's one of the big things and we are partnering together. And we're jumping in feet first together to this new venture. And, you know, you've mentioned my colleague, Eric caving in a few times, who is, you know, truly the best of the best out there. And who's been doing this forever. And it's not many people who are willing to start a new law firm at the stage of his career that he's at, but he's doing it because he cares so much. And I think that's just representative of, you know, who we are and what we want to be. And so we're each other's partners, we're also our clients partners, are our clients partners throughout this entire process, where our clients partners in every way that they need us. And we act as an advisor, attorney, friend, you know, it just sounding board, you know, occasional punching bag, we are who our clients need us to be. And we are their partners. And then we're also the government's partners throughout this process. And that's one of the really unique parts about being whistleblower lawyer, is that we work with the government directly, and we are partners with the government and that we are feeding the government the most helpful information we can and doing everything we can to support the government's investigation, because we believe our clients information is so valuable and so important to government enforcement efforts, that everything we can do to support that potential enforcement action is absolutely in the public's interest as well as in our clients. So those are all the reasons that we are whistleblower partners, and then I am so proud that we are who we are.

Greg Williams: 9:45

So I think you know, most times when somebody's lucky enough to find one or two or three people to partner with in the way that you describe. It's still something of an uphill battle you wind up being just too for three people, and I was just amazed at the number of partners that you have, and the number of success stories that you have on the website, when you seem like you are immediately a force to be reckoned with not just a small boutique law firm.

Poppy Alexander: 10:17

I mean, we'd like we'd like to think so I mean, we certainly are a boutique law firm in this sort of grander scheme of things, though, most of the smaller law firms are relatively small. So you know, compare compared to our, you know, sort of colleagues at the bar, we are one of the larger firms out there already. And, you know, I've been joking about this, but we are doing the thing that everyone says you shouldn't do, which is founding a law firm with, you know, over a dozen attorneys. But there's a reason why it works in this case. And that case, is exactly what you've referenced of our record of success, who our colleagues are, what we're ready to do, and also the work that we have, and the clients that we have, and the work that we are continuing to grow. So it feels possible to do the impossible right now.

Dina Rasor: 11:08

So I want the other thing that I think what is really bodes well for you is I'm always, I check every couple of years of how much money Eric Haven has returned, not just your firm himself, has returned to the government. And, you know, as an investigator, I didn't have as much control over that. But I worked on cases where we returned 200 million, which, you know, it's like, wow, and I'm like, Yeah, two days of toilet paper in the Pentagon. But you know, hey, but Eric is, is he gonna be over a billion now is, you know, it's it's over a billion dollars that he helped go back to the federal government. So the kinds of things you guys are doing is insane reason we started climate money watchdog was because people don't think about how you spend the money is just as important as about getting the money passed, the money gets passed. And I've told this to whistleblowers, I've told this to legislatures ever since 1981, when I started Pogo, and I said, you know, if you want your program to be successful, you have to spend the money correctly, because all the people who don't like it, all the corporate people, or whatever, you know, people who didn't like the key term loan when we passed it, the whole thing, and, and everything else, you know, they would try to kill it is if you don't make sure that the government is overseeing the money, and the corporations are not ripping them off. You know, it's there. Whenever there's fraud and ways people don't, people, the average voter in person doesn't want to spend money on something that's wasted. And, you know, that's one of the reasons that we got a defense budget freeze right in the middle of the Reagan administration, which was everyone said, it couldn't happen. And it was not all my, you know, late nights, trying to figure out why the M one tank doesn't work and going through tests, results and everything else. I hate to say this, but it's like anything else in the world, it's all marketing. We came up with it, we came up with some overpriced spare parts. And, you know, most of the listeners are too young to remember that, but that that was on fire in the 1980s, you know, members of Congress wearing, you know, a nut that's worth $1,000 dipped in gold around their necks in the barber box, or did that and, and all this kind of stuff. So what happens is, is that people got the public got so angry, that they actually we actually got a defense budget freeze for one year, which would save the government enormous amount of money, because people were doing things like we had done the $435 Hammer, which could be bought for $7 was bought for $7. And then all the overhead added and people began to pay their taxes and hammers. Me they literally sending the IRS and that's the kind of thing that gets people to understand that this isn't just some lawyer and thing to make whistleblowers rich. That's what I was told before. You lawyers, you just want to make visible which, and you've made some whistleblowers with millionaires. I've made a couple of whistleblowers. It feels good. You know, it kind of balances that scale that we all feel like sometimes never balance. So anyway, I just am so excited about your new firm. And one I'd like to ask you about each one of these laws that you use, you can use an environmental cases and if anything has changed since the podcast you did, which I think a lot has changed in the coffee bug cast, but I remember being sort of gobsmacked with the s something I didn't know when we did the podcast last at the SEC is that was able to the SEC was able to go through and the tip program and everything else and it was actually working and working new and and you could use, you could use environment standard environmental clauses in government contracts that these companies have. So that it didn't necessarily mean that they had to be cheating on the solar panels or cheating on the windmills, or whatever they're doing are carbon capture, which is a giant disaster. They were you were able to go in there. And then it gives the environmentalists a chance to go in there. And if they're not building the roads or doing the environmental things, right. And they have it their contract that they can that can actually go back and cancel that contract, which I remember in the middle of the podcast, I was like, wow, I didn't know this, because I hadn't done the SEC. So let me Why don't you tell us what has changed since then some of the new tip programs and got some listed, but what you think the new ones, with an emphasis on what you think the new ones bring to the table? Sure.

Poppy Alexander: 16:16

Um, so I think I have to admit that I don't remember exactly when we last talked in exactly where everything was then. So forgive me if I'm repeating myself. But I think one of the real trends that we've seen the last couple of years from the SEC, has been a real focus on fraud in the ESG space. So companies lying about their environmental, social and governance policies. And what we've seen has been the SEC using that as a way to get at some, you know, environmental and human rights issues on the behalf of companies and so on. And one of the examples I really like using her is looking at the action against the Brazilian mining company volley, which, as you might remember, was responsible for a massive bridge collapse in Brazil, which caused a huge amount of trouble. And the SEC ultimately brought an action against folly, not for the bridge collapse, but for allegedly lying about their governance policies. So they made all sorts of representations about their governance policies. And the SEC got them. They said that they were allegedly lying about those governance policies, because if they had had, the level of governance they claimed to have had, there's no way the bridge would have broken and bridge would have failed. And that that was a sign of a governance failure. It's a very interesting strategy to get at what was ultimately an environmental issue. But they got to it from a different way. And we're seeing those kinds of environmental, social, and then governance case is now in sort of all sorts of different aspects. And one other case I really want to highlight is there's an organization called Mighty Earth that has done very good work focusing on the ESG alleged misrepresentations by the meat company JBS related to their work in the Brazilian rainforest, which, again, has been a really interesting strategy of focusing on the ESG aspects of it to get at the ultimate underlying environmental issue.

Greg Williams: 18:39

So I just want to take a moment and explain to our listeners, sort of how this works, you know, what is the Securities and Exchange Commission doing, governing a foreign entity? And what you know, legal, legal and logical methods they use to go about these cases?

Poppy Alexander: 18:59

Sure. So we are recording this podcast on the day after the SEC is 90th birthday, which is a nice occasion to remember that this agency is not as old as we might all think of it as, yeah, the SEC was created in the 30s to regulate what was then seen as rampant fraud in you know, unscrupulous companies marketing to investors. And this, of course, was right after the stock market crash and dealing with the fallout from that. And what we got from that were sort of current securities law regimes, which are ultimately very straightforward and simple. The SEC is the federal regulatory commission that is responsible for laying down the rules around investments in the securities. So you know, we think of the New York Stock Exchange, it's NASDAQ. It's all of the other are sort of publicly traded securities markets. They also have some regulatory power over private securities and private investments. As well as some things you might not necessarily think of. For example, many pyramid schemes actually do qualify as securities. And the SEC has regulatory power over any qualified securities. So the SEC regulates they also enforce. So when you violate the securities laws, the SEC has the right to bring enforcement actions against you for different companies and you know, as well as unscrupulous investment advisors, broker dealers and other entities within the SEC has jurisdiction. Many foreign companies are traded on the US stock exchanges, and they sometimes are traded actively. On You know, they might be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, or they might be traded on what's called over the counter or OTC and most I shouldn't say most, many of the companies that are traded OTC are also going to fall within the SEC has jurisdiction. In in the Dodd Frank legislation that grew out of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal, and the SEC created a whistleblower office and created a whistleblower program and I should I would be failing if I failed to mention that the CFTC. Also created was for office at the same time, essentially under the same law, and with virtually identical regulations, some very small differences on both and the CFTC, which regulates the commodities market. And the SEC regulates the securities market. And for both programs, they now have a tipper, and that means that anyone with information related to a violation of their the relevant laws that the agency is responsible for, can bring that information to the agency, you file the information with the whistleblower office, the whistleblower office then sends it out to the enforcement team best position to evaluate it, they look at it, they kick the tires, they talk to the whistleblower, potentially, they subpoena documents from the company, they interview folks, and they ultimately make a decision where they're going to act on that information. So that's the way that the SEC whistleblower program has been working since it was created as part of Dodd Frank, these days, the SEC will tell you that most of their good cases come from whistleblowers CFTC, I increase in a very similar boat. And a very significant number of their good cases are also coming from whistleblowers. The whistleblower program is now integral to our securities, regulation and enforcement in this country.

Greg Williams: 23:01

So perhaps to summarize, you as a as a private company may not come to the United States, courting investors and gain those investors by lying to them. And the SEC is charged with upholding that basic principle. And if you lie to our investors in particular about how virtuous you are in terms of environment, social justice or governance, that violates SEC law, and the SEC is going to take you to take you to task for that, to

Poppy Alexander: 23:33

you know, to give you the lawyer, the answer, unfortunately, depends a little bit on what you mean by solicit American investors. But to the extent you are publicly offering up investment in your company to American investors, then yes, almost for sure the SEC is going to have jurisdiction over you. If you are going out on what we call investor roadshows, and you have you know, a PowerPoint presentation, you're showing to every major mutual fund company and private equity group out there and all the family offices that says, you know, here's all the amazing things that we do and their whole lie, then yeah, the SEC is probably good and to ask them questions.

Dina Rasor: 24:12

Yeah, and I wanted to bring up what we talked about Pat before and we should not assume that everyone's seen the bad podcast from two years ago. But there's also the key tam law, which is, is, you know, actual legal, and for the SEC is more administrative. So that's it's it doesn't sound like that makes a big difference, but it does. And where you contempt cases cases can actually go to court. This is usually decided administratively. Last time, I think we talked a little bit about greenwashing. Because greenwashing is you know exactly what's going on now and especially with, you know, oil companies who are getting more than fossil fuel companies that are getting more and more of themselves into all the job Biden money that's coming out. And it's kind of startling how much, but they also do this greenwashing, which, which they do a lot of it. I've seen they do it on their reports to their stockholders and people. Oh, yeah, everything's fine. You know, we got it too, you know, and you're not allowed to do that. If you're doing if you're doing something that's actually not true. And so I'm just wondering how you think what, what out of all these things we talk about whistleblower tips, you know, with various governments are just jumping into the key tam cases is what where would greenwashing fit the best? Because I've got a bunch of environmental people saying, Oh, just, if I can understand this, we'll find it. Yes, it's there.

Poppy Alexander: 25:53

Well, great. And I'm always happy to talk to anyone who wants to wants to throw some potential hypotheticals around. And so let's, let's take it one at a time. So the False Claims Act, as you said, or key Tom lawsuit as another way of saying it was originally created by Abraham Lincoln to stop civil war profiteering. So there were the companies that were selling the Union Army, sand, and pretending it was sugar. You know, the means that maybe change, but unfortunately, the fact hasn't changed that we still have a number of government contractors that are selling the proverbial sand. And pretending like a chair, when we're talking about government contracts that then touch on environmental aspects, that can start to be very huge problem, obviously, you have, let's say, power power plants that are not operating at the standards that they claim to eat, operating, and then charging people money as if they were, we have companies that are, you know, charging for cleanup, and not doing the cleanup. And we have, you know, any of a variety of instances where companies are not meeting their obligations under contract to meet a certain level of environmental protection or a certain level of environmental cleanup, or mitigation, or whatever it might be. If that's true, and you have nonpublic information about it, you potentially could file a claim on the government's behalf and step into the shoes of the government, as it were and file a case in federal court where there are state equivalents for some some states out there and file a claim on the government's behalf saying, hey, government, company A is cheating you, here's all the ways that they're cheating it. Those cases are False Claims Act cases, they are filed under seal, which gives the government time to investigate the claim, determine if they think there's any merit to it. And ultimately make a decision about whether they want to take on the cases their own or what's legally called intervene in the case. And if they do, government tends to win their cases, and companies tend to settle at that stage. If they don't, you, as the whistleblower do have the right to bring the case on your own, on what's called a non intervened basis, those cases are very hard to win, but not impossible. And, you know, it's certainly a way to try to bring these cases forward. And that is it's we're saying a very big difference between the False Claims Act and the agency programs like the SEC and such. If the SEC says no, the SEC says no, I'm sorry, I don't think there's any worth your information, we're not going to act on it, you do not have a private right of action to proceed. And you're really reliant on the government to do something. So that is a very big difference. So that's what you can sort of think about in the environmental space for the False Claims Act for the SEC. It is different, as you said, because in the SEC world, we're essentially relying on a focus on investor harm, which sometimes feels very weird, right, when we're talking about what is ultimately environmental harm, and oftentimes human rights violations, which are usually tied up in environmental harm. And it feels weird to talk about the poor investors out there. But it is worth remembering that both groups are being harmed in different ways. And for example, if there is a mining company that operates in a Latin American country that has local laws, many of them do that the community has to approve before a mine can be operated. And that mining company is telling its investors that oh, yeah, no problem. We have community approval, whereas actually the local community is fighting tooth and nail to stop the mind because the mind is going to destroy, you know, the local land that they depend on. And it's going to Do rip out the forest or what whatever the particular scenario might be, that's lying to their investors and potentially a material misrepresentation to their investors. And it's also very significant environmental harm. So it's a mistake to see these things is is that different, I think, or necessarily opposed. And so I think it's important that we make sure that we, you know, see them as part and parcel of the same thing. And it is a way to get there. So, you know, DNA, as you pointed out, these days, every major company has what they call sustainability reports, they have, you know, these reports saying, look at all these amazing things we're doing for the environment, here's how we're getting to carbon neutral, here's how we are, you know, reducing our pollution, here's, you know, all the ways we're reducing plastic, whatever it might be. And to the extent that those are lies, and they really, you know, and they're hammering them home to their investors, and maybe they're mentioning them during their investor day presentations, maybe they're, you know, tweeting about it, maybe they're putting other, you know, executives, LinkedIn, whatever it might be, that starts to be potentially misrepresentations that the SEC starts carrying about, and that starts to then be something that you could potentially see a whistleblower submission around.

Greg Williams: 31:22

So I just wanted to point out that I think the potential impact is an important thing to to mention, especially distinguishing between key Tam and investment protection. In the case of key Tom, what you can recover is based, as I understand it, solely on the amount of fraud, which, especially for large companies is unlikely to be significant scale or as significant in scale as market capitalization, whereas with SEC fraud, if I remember our last conversation correctly,

Unknown: 32:03

when you deceive investors, what the SEC can seek to recover is the additional market capitalization that arises from that deception. And that can be enormous. So

Poppy Alexander: 32:18

I wish it was I wish it was that much. And very rarely are we going to see an enforcement action that's going to be anywhere near that size, I mean, the SEC sets their enforcement action. Recovery based on all sorts of complicated formulas, we're we're almost never going to see a number that's going to truly reflect the difference in market cap. Only probably in like the really like, you know, your entire business is based upon this one misrepresentation or something like that, and even then it would be relatively unlikely. Generally speaking, FCA recoveries are actually much larger. And the reason for that is the FCA provides that if a company lies to the government, they're liable for treble damages, for however much they cost the government plus penalties. Nobody ever pays treble damages. To be clear, I mean, usually, it's somewhere in the one and a half to two range. But still, depending on the size of the contract, that can be just an enormous amount of money. And depending on the number of times the governor or the number of times they submit fake bills, or false bills or misleading bills to the government, the penalties can also add up pretty significantly as well. And so it's it's hard to sort of, say for sure, which one is going to ultimately be a, you know, a bigger number. But they are certainly significant and important penalties that we're talking about.

Greg Williams: 33:54

Just quickly FCA is False Claims Act.

Poppy Alexander: 33:56

Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. I will try not to speak in acronyms. It's very hard to avoid sometimes.

Dina Rasor: 34:02

Well, I It's so so the listeners, you're saying investors oil that they lose money, that's their problem and stuff. But you have to understand that there are good investors like the state of California pension fund, which is Giganto. I mean, they they can rule the world with what they decide to fund or not. But it also you have to understand that investors as lifeblood of these people going forward. And so you may not like the fact that to some rich billionaires investing or somebody else investing but there are these funds to and mutual funds and all kinds of people that invest in these these different things. But what you need to realize is that that is the fuel. So if a company is going along and they're greenwashing and they're lying about it, and their investors like oh, this is great, I'm gonna put in more money. That is them getting money under false pretenses to their investors, which then they go off and continue to do, you know, crimes against the taxpayer, and then the environment. But the investors are the lifeblood. In other words, if you bring this forward and you show the greenwashing is lie is this that this stock will fall? You know, because people will be oh, wait a minute, you know, you were you said in this SEC report, and, you know, they have the investor calls to which I would always think, you know, would be a place where they probably lied the most. And so I just want want to thank people not to be turned off that you're going in doing this for the investors because if that company like, like, say, an Exxon or, you know, somebody, something smaller, even me, even these people that are now trying to take over solar from fossil fuel and stuff, if they make all the problems or carbon capture, which is my bugaboo i It is clearly the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And they lie so much about how much carbon the capturing.

Greg Williams: 36:03

So this is all very interesting to talk about the abstract, but I think it would be exciting for our listeners to hear about an example. So if there's one that you think is particularly compelling, we'd love to hear about it. Yeah, sure.

Poppy Alexander: 36:17

And, you know, as, as you said, where we as a team are very fortunate. First of all, to represent some truly extraordinary clients, and, and also to have had some, you know, fairly fairly big successes, and contributing to Eric's $1 billion, returned to the public FISC. Yeah, and I think that is important, right, we're talking about ultimately taxpayers money is being misused. And the False Claims Act is the best tool we have to return the money the taxpayers spend on companies that are overcharging them. Fortunately, I should say, and, you know, I to get on my high horse for a second, I think it's completely insane, that we really don't teach the False Claims Act in law schools. I personally remember learning about the False Claims Act in, you know, a throwaway comment in my federal courts, you know, textbook in one of my classes, and that's it. And yet it is the tool that returns billions of dollars to taxpayers every year and is the best tool we have. So one, relatively recent victory. That I think is a really interesting example of our case was a group of oil companies in Korea, who I were, you know, obviously, there are a number of US military bases in Korea. So getting the contract to supply the oil. And the gas to these military bases was a huge contract, and very lucrative. And show in one instance, allegedly, what happened is a group of oil companies got together in a room and divvied up those contracts and decided who would bid on what contract, how much they would pay, who would supply the losing bid to make it look like the winning bid was legitimate, how much that losing bid would be for, and I, you know, divvied up the territory accordingly. Well, this conspiracy is Bid rigging, essentially conspiracy allegedly lasted for over a decade and allow these oil companies to charge the government something like 200 times what, you know, the say Korean government was paying for exactly the same oil 600

Greg Williams: 38:51

was just pause on it 200 times.

Poppy Alexander: 38:56

So they were somewhat relying on the ignorance of the US purchasers who didn't know what oil should cost in Korea, and somewhat relying on the fact that there were enough, you know, alleged co conspirators in the room. Um, they made this whole deal look legitimate. Finally, it was Blair came forward and reported on this conspiracy, and it should be said that it's very hard to catch Bid rigging conspiracies, because usually they are, by definition, essentially done in secret. And you really need an insider to come forward. And of course, that's exactly what the False Claims Act is designed to encourage. And so whistleblower came forward my client, and we brought this information to the government and this was an action that also sparked a major criminal investigation, because the contract was deemed to have risen to a criminal level. And, you know, this is one of those instances where I, you know, to give credit where credit was due, come knees were actually quite smart about it looked, looked at the evidence presented, saw the writing on the wall and settled really quite quickly. And all things considered and and the government was able to recover$363 million in criminal and civil penalties. And based on this conduct over this decade long conspiracy more than that the effect has been enormous. You may have heard about the procurement. Oh, boy, what's it called on the procurement Task Force, there's a word in there that I'm forgetting, that is now focused on finding these kinds of big rigging conspiracies in procurement. And particularly with a focus on the defense industry, and has been actually quite successful. In really focusing the attention on antitrust conspiracies like this, in, in defense contracting around the world, there's been a number of follow on cases that have happened, all growing out of the task force that was created, after my client was willing to come forward. So we've seen the lasting impact of this case, in short of all different arenas that you might not think of which has been really great.

Dina Rasor: 41:23

And has been determined yet how much the whistleblower gets on this. Yes.

Poppy Alexander: 41:29

So our client received a share of the civil penalties, not the criminal penalties. And so this was a this was an intervened case. And the law provides that whistleblower is entitled to between 15 and 25% of the inner if of the amount recovered, if the case is intervened, and our client was awarded towards the top end of that range, out of recognition of just the enormous importance of his information, as well as a number of other factors that led to the government, recognizing how important it was.

Dina Rasor: 42:11

And that it's really important to say here that that has, you know, when you I've done this some times in my career to when you make a whistleblower, a millionaire on this, other people start saying, wow, you know, I didn't, I was afraid to come forward, but maybe this is worth it. And, you know, and that kind of thing, it sort of makes it much more legitimate than just trying to flail away at the company. And it also has a deterrent effect. I always kept saying, especially when I was doing DOD, key terms, is I never Yeah, maybe I'd got 200 million back that wasn't just DOD, but 200 million back, but the different the, the diversion and other as people are starting to say, oh, people in companies are starting to say, Gosh, everybody in this around this conference table, somebody could go and make themselves a million dollars and rat us out. It's kind of like the mob. And the sense that the, you don't know what you have, you've made them avoid. In other words, they'll either get smarter at it, or they won't do it, as you know, they won't do it as much. Or if you get a task force, like anything else. In healthcare, now they've got a class action suit and in congressional hearings coming up on a health care thing I was looking at, and boy, that is a deterrent. That is a deterrent because they're like, Okay, across the industry, everyone's like, I don't want to come up with a $363 million, you know, and so you never know how much money you you on the side saved by other people not doing the same thing. At

Poppy Alexander: 44:01

that is absolutely right. That is absolutely right. And I do want to I want to pause for a second on the question of whistleblower awards. Um, it you know, these numbers often sound quite large in absolute terms, and they are absolutely in some some instances, this is life changing money. I mean, we have had clients who have been in really, really dire straits financially. Oftentimes our clients are fired for blowing the whistle for coming forward. Sometimes they are retaliated against and all sorts of other ways. Oftentimes, unfortunately, our clients are blackballed from their chosen industry. You know, you train your whole life to be an expert in whatever your particular chosen field is, and suddenly you can't get a job doing it. That's awful. And and the whistleblower awards. It's it's not an effective system, but it sometimes effectively operates as unemployed. Have an insurance, right? Because you're probably never going to be working again in your chosen field if you're known as a whistleblower. Um, but the other thing to say is just, it's never going to work. If you as a whistleblower, or whistleblower only because of the financial awards, it's just not going to work. And the reason for that is that being was was really hard. I mean, it just truly is, it's like, and I say this as a whistleblower lawyer who loves this work, and I love the whistleblower programs, and I love everything about it. I will never sugarcoat this for anyone, it is hard, you are coming forward, you're reporting against a company that might represent your friends might represent your family might represent your community and all sorts of different ways. And it's going to be a long slog, I wish the government was in a position to act a lot faster than they are, but they're not. And that's just the truth of it. And these cases tend to take many years, a very, very fast cases, three years, most of our cases take significantly longer than that, occasionally decades. And that's a long time. That's a long time. And if you're talking about a False Claims Act case, there's a court seal in place, which means you can't talk about it to anyone, you can't talk to your family, you can't talk to your friends, you can't tell anyone about this major thing that's happening in your life, except for your lawyer. And that's a real emotional challenge. So what we have found over the years is without fail, the whistleblowers who are ready for this process are the ones who are doing so out of motivation that they have to fix the problem, that's wrong, and they have to make it right. And it has to be that deep, underlying just drive to fix things and tell the truth that can sustain you throughout this process. Because if you don't have that, it's very, very hard to do so. And we will turn clients down who come to us, if all they're interested in talking about is the potential reward at the end, because first of all, you know, the odds are, you know, quite honestly, not great. Most whistleblower cases are not successful, we are more successful than most firms out there. But still, you know, not all of our clients are going to recover. And, and I know that if that person is only focused on the award, they're gonna hate every single second of it, and they're gonna hate me, and they're gonna hate the government, they're gonna hate everything about it. And that's just not gonna work. And I love whistleblowers and love working with them. And I love their passion, and that drive and their commitment and their truth telling and everything about that. And that's, that's what makes it work.

Greg Williams: 47:49

I just, I want to take a moment to just say, and I've said it before, for our listeners, if if you've never met somebody in a situation like this, it is very difficult to imagine what people like this, like.

Dina Rasor: 48:06

Yeah, I am, I actually wrote a whistleblower. There's the organization I helped found Pogo project and government oversight still has a version of it, where I put a list down of why you don't want to do this. And whether it's key Tam, or just plain whistleblowing, and all the negative things and I had staff came to me and said, No one's ever gonna blow the whistle. And I said, Then, those people don't want to, but I've probably I probably hundreds and hundreds of whistleblowers have come to me over the course of 40 years. And I always listen to what the first thing they say. And the ones that there's sometimes there's the sour grapes, you know, the, you know, so and so, if they talk about what they have done to them first, and not the issue, then I might, you know, or they aren't willing to write out a two page summary if it's just willing to do you know, that the light bulb, but also if they, you know, some of them was like, you made a lot of money doing this, if that comes out of their mouth first. I just realized they can't go the distance because sour grapes, and maybe getting money like playing the lottery. It doesn't sustain you, but if I've got somebody on the phone, or it's called me up, I am so mad at the fraud. I mean, it's the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts is what I always call them who have been told ever since we were little if if you just tell the truth, you won't get spanked, which is not true. You will get spanked but you're just telling the truth. But the people who are outraged over the fraud, aka outraged over the waste of government money outrage over the fact that you know, like saying climate this is going to cause climate to get bad, you know, to get a black eye or something. And so, you know, what you were saying to me is almost exactly what I tell People who are saying they, you know, people call me a pattern. How do you know this was a blurs? Right? Is that got to be passionate about the crime? Absolutely. There's some crime, though

Poppy Alexander: 50:12

I do want to I want to make one. There's one place where I think, you know, I do want to add that we don't only have Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts for clients, I mean, truly, one of one of the underlying principles of the False Claims Act is something that was said on the congressional floor as they were debating it originally, which is, it takes a road to catch a rock. And there's some truth to that, you know,

Dina Rasor: 50:42

sort of the Michael Cohen syndrome, which we can bring out.

Poppy Alexander: 50:47

I mean, there's certainly something to be said for that. Sometimes the people who are going to know the information that's necessary, the government are gonna have their hands a little bit dirty. But if you're a lower level person, let's say you're, you know, if it's a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case, and a concerned bribes paid to a foreign official for business benefit, the people are gonna have the best information are probably the people who were actually paying the bribes, they probably weren't the masterminds of the case, they were probably doing so on someone else's orders, where they're going to be the people who are in the room when those bribes were paid. And, you know, we don't, we don't need Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts to tell the truth, we need people who are committed to making sure the truth gets out there. And then there's many different people who can fall into that category.

Dina Rasor: 51:34

Actually, when the key tam law was passed, during the Reagan, Reagan administration, William Fred Smith was the attorney general. And he was fundamentally against it. And what he said immediately is we're not doing this, we're just not doing this. And he got more and more pressure, you know, to go. But they saw it as a very negative thing. And they tried when, when people would come for it, I remember we had somebody from TRW, which is another company. And he was, he was their accountant. And his name was Larry Ely, which we said, oh, we gotta go to this guy just for his name anyway, if you're an accountant, but he was involved in part of it, but not in the way, you know, not in the not in the bigger way. But as soon as we gave it to the government, the government went after him. And the beginning, when you first started doing key tam suits, they would go after your whistleblower. First, you've broken the law. Oh, my God, we gotta go after you. And it was only because Congress just pounded on the Justice Department that, you know, you can't keep doing that. That happens. So that is, I love that, over the course of all these years, the now the DOJ loves it. And what a lot of people don't know is it's the key tam suits that bring in the most money. The Justice Department's, oh, you know, the False Claims Act, which has just been supposed to do, they aren't nearly have the, the efforts and the trials and whatever to be able to bring in so the most of the money they get back from that is through the key tam lawsuit, whistleblowers. And

Poppy Alexander: 53:21

and is absolutely true. The Department of Justice now really appreciate was worse. And in fact, recently, we've seen that about three months ago, and the Justice Department announced that they're going to create their own whistleblower program, that is going to relate to any violation that results in criminal forfeiture, which is a very broad category. This, they announced it approximately three months ago and immediately announced they were going to go into a 90 day policy sprint, we are just about at the end of those 90 days. Show very soon, I expect that we will hear exactly how DOJ envisions this law working. But it's a potentially massive, massive whistleblower program that could fill a lot of existing gaps and other whistleblower programs. So for example, one of our newest programs and a program I spend a lot of time working under are these days is run by the Department of Treasury and concerns violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, which are all the laws that regulate banks and other financial institutions regarding their compliance obligations to stop dirty money flowing through their system. So it's the reason that we all show an ID when we open a bank account, and it's the reason that banks have to file suspicious activity reports when they see things that look unusual or something they Bank Secrecy Act also applies to money services, businesses, and which include, you know, essentially all the companies where you're trading money when money is moving through With the system, and usually those, those companies are going to fall within the Bank Secrecy Act, the other half of the concerns violations of sanctions. And this was a program expansion we were able to get after Russia invaded Ukraine. And the government was really aware of exactly how important our sanctions regime is to stopping international corruption and international money laundering and the sort of general movement of dirty money everywhere. So the sanctions law has been enormously valuable whistleblower program that is going very, very well. However, there's an exception to the sanctions and the BSA law that provides that whistleblowers cannot share in any amount recovered and forfeiture, for sanctions violations, oftentimes, the vast majority of the money that's going to be recovered is going to be forfeiture. So for example, if you know, of a sanctioned Russian, who, you know, has a penthouse somewhere in New York, and you report that to the government, the government seizes that penthouse that's usually going to be forfeiture, it's not going to be a different form of penalty. So right now, and that's excluded from the sanctions whistleblower program. However, if DOJ created their forfeiture specific program, suddenly we would have a whole other avenue to report that information and the government and, you know, particularly when we're talking about whistleblowers reporting on, say, sanction individuals, these whistleblowers are not only taking the sort of normal employment risks and coming forward, they're usually taking some pretty, pretty serious safety risks and coming forward. And so I feel, you know, ethically, like, I need to be able to tell those people, that there is a potential Avenue at the end, where they're frankly going to have the resources to protect themselves, from whatever might come their way, before they take on that safety risk. And so having something like that would be enormously helpful. Another just another hole, I want to point out right now that I think this could potentially fill is and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is an extremely important tool we have, particularly in industries, like the extractive industry, where we have a huge problem with bribery being essentially tied up and environmental destruction and human rights abuses. And we can bring those as whistleblower cases, as long as it's a publicly traded company, because then this SEC has joined jurisdiction with the Department of Justice to we can bring those cases the SEC, and then also send them to the Department of Justice for investigation. But if it's a privately traded company, and many very, very publicly traded, privately held company, and many very large companies are, we cannot bring that as a whistleblower case right now. However, if DOJ were to create their own whistleblower program, suddenly, we would have the opportunity to do so. So you can I mean, those are just two examples of how valuable the DOJ program could be to fill in some of these gaps in for, you know, some of the real dirty money issues that we have, which of course, fuel, you know, environmental degradation and all sorts of ways. Just real quick, just,

Dina Rasor: 58:25

just real quick, real quick, I just wanted to say so people who might not know what private and public companies are, public companies have a board of directors you have to report to you have to do all the SEC things, much more stuff. And then there's private companies, and one of the things that was so hard going after the Trump Organization is that it was a private company. You know, Trump does not have a board of directors, you know, I mean, he's, you know, he, in the sense he puts his kids in, you know, this visors and all this guys, but he, he is he was immune from a lot of the things that protected, the, you know, nobody's investing in it. Well, I guess that people are investing in hotels and things like that, but it's not the usual thing where they're stock and, and a board of directors and, you know, Elon Musk is getting couldn't get in trouble, because he's got a board of directors, you know, no, we're not going to give you $56 billion bonus this year, you know, kind of thing. But public companies are much easier to get at. And so I'm really happy to hear that there's a possibility of, of going after the private companies because a lot of people make these private companies. It's really hard to get to them. I'm sorry, Greg, I didn't mean to do. Likewise,

Greg Williams: 59:45

I wanted to clarify for our listeners that extractive industries means industries like drilling for oil drilling for gas, if you're digging something up out of the ground that is an extractive industry. Yeah. Oh, Um, so normally we one of the ways that we wrap up an episode is to ask, you know, what are you excited about? What's new in this area? I feel like you've just told us all of that. So, in lieu of that, what final words might you want to give her audience?

Poppy Alexander: 1:00:23

You know, I think I think we are coming into a period where we just really are beginning to appreciate what suppliers and understand what suppliers, and we're seeing this now, in so many different industries. And the optimist in me hopes that we're also coming to a place where companies are beginning to understand the value of whistleblowers as well, and understand that they don't have to be, you know, public enemy number one, you know, smart companies would realize that when a whistleblower comes forward, and says, Hey, guys, we got a problem, they shouldn't retaliate against that person, they should say, fantastic. Thank you for telling me about this problem before the government knocks on my door, let's fix it. Um, and I continue to be optimistic that we will someday move towards that model. In the meantime, before we get there, and we can convince corporations that that's the right approach. We have the whistleblower programs, and we have a growing with whistleblower infrastructure that's getting stronger and stronger by the day. And it's covering more and more bad conduct by the day. And we have a growing recognition, I think, from both government attorneys. And the private bar was a blower attorneys like myself, the public at large, and what that means, and I will say, you know, just I started exclusively representing whistleblowers in 2016, so about eight years ago, and in the eight years I've been doing this work, the sophistication of people coming in through the door really seems to have grown fairly significantly in terms of people just having some basic background understanding of what the whistleblower programs are and how they work, I think the word is getting out. And that's only in everyone's interest. And to make sure that we have these tools, these sort of unbelievably powerful tools to hold corporations accountable, to stop them from doing all the bad stuff that unfortunately, they occasionally do. All the environmental destruction, all the human rights abuses, all the other ways that new corporations can act against the public interest. We have these tools, and we should use them, and we should use them for good. And we should make sure that the right cases are getting to the government's IRS game to the people who could actually do something about it. So I'm, I'm really hopeful, honestly, about where we're at right now. And I think we're going to just see that continue to grow and strengthen.

Dina Rasor: 1:02:58

And corruption is not going to go away, I think that there is we are starting to as a country understand the social problem of corruption, that when you know, when you don't play by the rules, and you don't do this, and you don't do that our system doesn't work. And it just gets worse and worse. And the more corruption that get people get away with it, the more jaded, the public becomes thinking the government can't do this. So I'm really glad that government is finally being smart, and getting very smart lawyers like you and Eric cavion. And using your knowledge, you know, to expand it so that it for sanctions and everything else is because there's just people all just say, Oh, it's all corrupt. Everything's under the table. It's not. But the guys who are the people who are corrupt, get away with it an awful lot. And that's why we need these laws.

Greg Williams: 1:03:58

Probably I think your words are about the most optimistic note you've ever been able to end an episode on. So I'm very thankful to wrap things up. And to thank you for being back with us tonight. And we look forward to speaking with you again, whether it's 90 days from now or some of the time the future. So thank you very much for participating in finding whistleblower partners. And thanks for joining us again tonight. Absolutely,

Poppy Alexander: 1:04:26

absolutely. And I'm honored to end on an optimistic note, I'll be honest, that's not usually the role that I played. But um, I do want to say to your listeners that if you are interested in learning more about the whistleblower programs, or the kinds of fraud that are covered or anything like that, I will put in a plug for our website, which actually has quite a wealth of information. And our website is www dot whistleblower dot law. So hopefully not hard to remember and you can find a whole lot more information there.