Whistle-Blower Lawyers Give Obama $3M

Attorneys for whistle-blowers have donated millions of dollars to President Obama—which is hardly surprising, considering that his fight against corporate fraud has put millions in their pockets, the New York Times reports. With the Dodd-Frank Act empowering whistle-blowers, Obama's administration has paid them $1.6 billion so far, and lawyers have taken up to 40% of that. "Increasingly, this is not just about exposing wrongdoing," says an analyst. "It is about trying to generate as much money and fees for the firms handling the cases."

In fact, top laws firms have helped SEC officials forge whistle-blower rules and later hired them on as lawyers. At the same time, the federal government has collected $13.2 billion from companies whose fraud was exposed by whistle-blowers—and the lawyers who have raised more than $3 million for Obama insist they're doing it out of admiration. But they don't deny the financial incentive: "The way you get more hunting dogs showing up is you feed them," says the head of a legal industry group. "And the Justice Department is cooking with Crisco right now." (More whistleblowers stories.)