Whistleblowing in America is happening at an alarming rate and every institution is a part of this trend. The Whistleblower Support Fund is helping as many truth tellers as possible. Our book, Don't Kill the Messenger is a must read so that one can understand who and how one can blow the whistle. Before blowing the whistle one must contact a group for assistance so that when the retaliation happens one is ready to face it.

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"Blowing the Whistle" On Wall Street:

He Took the Risk, and He Paid the Price

It was a moment that Mark Mohan says he will never forget.

It was also the start of an "endless nightmare" that would leave the 57-year-old Connecticut stockbroker without a paying job, without a spouse, and without a way to defend himself against what he describes as a "series of merciless reprisals" by one of the most powerful stock brokerage firms on Wall Street.

Mohan's brutal moment took place on a summer afternoon in 2016, when he finally decided to heed his conscience and start blowing the whistle on "financial crimes that were being committed daily by ruthless money managers" at the huge, international Wall Street firm known as UBS.

As a licensed Ph.D. social worker and counselor who has specialized in assisting whistleblowers for more than 40 years, I've seen what happens to those brave souls who dare to "speak truth to power." According to a New York Times-published survey of 300 American whistleblowers I conducted a while back, the vast majority of those who take the risky step of blowing the whistle on alleged corporate crime soon wind up jobless and penniless, even while struggling to make their voices heard.

Mark Mohan's story is one of the most troubling I've heard.

After discovering that the immensely powerful UBS financial empire was "failing to provide required data on securities that were being offered for sale on the New York Stock Exchange," Mohan realized that he would have to report the lapses in order to protect his clients . . . many of whom were "ordinary American citizens who stood to lose their retirement savings because of the UBS refusal to obey the law."

Some background: during more than twenty years as a Financial Advisor at UBS and several other Wall Street firms, Mohan "saw firsthand what happened to stockbrokers who rocked the boat" by reporting illegalities to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission,

After daring to blow the whistle on fraudulent practices, he says, many of these courageous truth-tellers soon discovered that the legal strictures designed to protect American whistleblowers would not save them from the reprisals that quickly followed their decisions to expose fraud on Wall Street.

"I wasn't naïve," says Mohan today. "I understood the risks I'd be taking if I went public with information about how the UBS financial empire was unloading some of its own troubled proprietary holdings in stocks on unsuspecting clients and investors while also failing to disclose information to clients and investors on securities offered on the New York and other stock exchanges. These abuses occurred because of the UBS refusal to obey the law."

Mohan immediately filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission after both violations occurred. "Failing to disclose those proprietary 'insider' trades was clearly illegal," he says today, "and it was almost certain to depress the value of the affected stocks".

Adds the disgusted Mohan: "Like most Financial Advisers who trade securities daily on Wall Street, I was familiar with UBS' long history of being investigated for improper practices by the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice. All too often, those investigations ended with formal plea agreements in which the financial giant agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to escape criminal prosecution. Those settlements have been carefully documented by the Wall Street Journal and other news media."

After "agonizing" over his decision to blow the whistle, Mohan realized he didn't have a choice.

"If I'd remained silent, I'd have left my clients in financial jeopardy so I took the leap by alerting the SEC and UBS to the fact that these "insider" violations were occurring almost daily.

The response was immediate, he says. "Soon the decision-makers at UBS were threatening my job security, while insisting that I was simply a disgruntled employee striking back."

But that was only the beginning of the reprisals, he adds.

"All too soon, UBS began tampering with my yearly compensation and my disability insurance. But I refused to back off and instead filed additional information with the U.S. Department of Labor and the State of Connecticut.

"Meanwhile, the SEC, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice all refused to review my case, despite the anti-reprisal measures mandated by both the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) and the Dodd-Frank Act (2010).

These days, Mark Mohan is living on the edge of bankruptcy. "I lost my marriage and I'm now in danger of losing my house to foreclosure," he says. "I've learned the hard way that the process of adjudicating whistleblower complains is thoroughly biased in favor of employers."

Without legal funds or pro bono representation by an attorney, he recently filed "pro se" lawsuits against UBS in federal and state courts. "I'm told that I have little hope of success but I press on.

"Just recently, I stood alone in a courtroom while half a dozen UBS lawyers made a concerted effort to get my suit dismissed. They succeeded, at least temporarily although I'm now amending my complaints and will be back in court soon."

Mohan also pointed out that the judge in his federal case dismissed it "without prejudice," allowing him to re-file his claim in order to cure its deficiencies, mainly because he's still "technically employed" by UBS a step that was he was required to take in order to pursue his disability rights while struggling with a severe spinal ailment that makes it difficult for him to work more than an hour or two without severe back pain.

As he fights for his financial life, Mohan says has been "utterly disgusted" by recent news reports about several U.S. senators who reportedly "sold off" millions of dollars' worth of corporate stock . . . after learning from "intelligence agency briefings during closed-door sessions" that their holdings might soon plunge in value due to the approaching coronavirus epidemic. "This kind of immoral, unethical activity is surprisingly 'legal,'" he says, "since our lawmakers have one set of rules for themselves and another for everyone else.

"Regulators do absolutely nothing. Then spend their entire careers as high-paid attorneys defending the very-same Wall Street firms that they later regulate. Then they return to their former law firms after leaving office. Ask yourself this: Why is no one in jail after the [2008] financial crisis? To assume that regulators are 'looking out' for the American public is a laughable proposition, at this point.

"That's precisely the kind of 'insider trading' that I blew the whistle on with UBS," says Mohan today. "The corruption is everywhere, and someone has to speak up and speak the truth."

As a counselor who has worked with hundreds of whistleblowers over the years, I couldn't agree more. Whether we're talking about the "Ukraine Whistleblower" who recently spoke truth to the White House or about brave truth-tellers like Mark Mohan, we need to remember the words of that great German-Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke out about the evils of Nazism and paid for it with his life.

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil."

[A social worker who spent 27 years as an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, Donald R. Soeken often serves as an "expert witness" in cases involving whistleblowers. He is the author of Don't Kill the Messenger! How America's Valiant Whistleblowers Risk Everything in Order to Speak out Against Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Business and Government (https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Kill-Messenger-Whistleblowers-Everything/dp/1492898090).) Dr. Soeken lives in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.]

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Authors Website: http://www.whistleblowing.us

Authors Bio:

International Whistleblower Archive Don Soeken, LCSW-C, Ph.D. Founder and President, Whistleblower Support Fund
Captain, US Public Health Service (retired)
Theology degree, Valparaiso University; MSW, Wayne State University; Ph.D., Human Development, University of Maryland.
– Founded Integrity International/Associated Mental Health Specialties to meet the counseling needs of whistleblowers
– Forty years of professional experience in the multidisciplinary areas of practice, research, and teaching.
– Licensed certified Social Worker (in Maryland, the District of Columbia and West Virginia) and Diplomat of the National Association of Social Workers.
– Lifetime Achievement Award for work with persons of integrity from the National Association of Social Workers, 1991.