New fraud whistleblower program pays up to $30,000 per qualifying tip

(The Center Square) – The Trump administration is starting a new $25 million program that will pay Americans who discover and report instances of fraud up to $30,000 per qualifying tip.

The federal government has established similar financial incentive programs before, including an IRS whistleblower program strengthened in 2006 to reward individuals for reporting tax violations and a Securities and Exchange Commission program authorized in 2010 to reward tips about securities law violations. But a defining feature of the new program is that it is designed to reward whistleblowers “at a much earlier stage of prosecution” and does not “require the matter to result in large fines or forfeiture.”