Whistleblower Protection Blog : Whistleblower Lawyer & Attorney : National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund : Whistleblower Protection, Fraud Claims : Washington DC

President Obama recently nominated Robert E. O’Neill to serve as U.S. attorney for Florida’s Middle District, one of the country’s busiest regions. The nomination will be reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months and will need to be approved by a vote of the full Senate. However, there are questions regarding his nomination based on O’Neill’s alleged involvement with whistleblower retaliation.

Between 1999 and 2003, O’Neill was former federal prosecutor Jeffrey J. Del Fuoco’s supervisor. Del Fuoco was in charge of investigating a corrupt Manatee County, Florida sheriff, Charles B. “Charlie” Wells, and an elite group of his deputies known as the Delta Squad. Then Assistant U.S. Attorney O’Neill gave Del Fuoco a glowing review, stating he “was able to demonstrate the legitimacy of the investigation and the fact that the corruption was rampant.”

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CNBC released a story yesterday about the qui tam provisions of the new Dodd-Frank Act, the financial reform law. They call the whistleblower provisions "little-noticed," indicating that we here at the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC) still need to do a better job of informing the media about new developments in whistleblower protection. 

In the article, NWC Executive Director Stephen M. Kohn tells CNBC, "If the law works, whistleblowers should be rewarded with millions of dollars. Those whistleblowers will save investors billions and billions of dollars." CNBC notes that the new provision could have helped whistleblowers like Harry Markopolos who tried in vein to get the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to act against Bernard Madoff. If Dodd-Frank was in place then, Markopolos could have filed a qui tam claim, stopped Madoff's ponzi scam, and collected a portion of Madoff's ill-gotten gains. CNBC commented that NWC's seminar last Friday shows that lawyers are "chomping at the bit" for a share of the recoveries.

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The curriculum for our upcoming seminar titled “Integrating the False Claims Act into Your Law Practice” has been updated to include a presentation on the on the numerous whistleblower provisions contained in the new Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

It is approved for CLE credit in Pennsylvania and Ohio for attorneys who choose to attend the seminar in our offices in Washington, D.C. Attorneys also have the option to attend via teleconference, but not for CLE credit.

Date: Friday, July 23, 2010
Time: 12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. EST

To register for this seminar, click here. For more information, click here or call 202-342-1903. 

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Public interest groups have scheduled a town hall meeting to discuss legislation designed to protect miners and other workers from injury and disease. It is scheduled for next Tuesday, July 27, 2010, at Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, 4444 Arlington Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia, from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. A flyer is available here. Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, is scheduled to speak. The purpose of the town hall meeting is to build support for H.R. 5663, the Robert C. Byrd Miner Safety and Health Act. This legislation would expand and improve workplace safety laws by strengthening both the Mine Safety and Health Act (MSHA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). We posted a previous notice about this bill here.

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