Jordan A. Thomas

In 2011, he established the nation's first legal practice devoted exclusively to SEC whistleblowers. His clients have launched many of the Commission's highest-profile cases and set the program's precedents: the first officer of a public company to win a whistleblower award, the first successful SEC whistleblower to receive criminal immunity, and the first whistleblower to receive an award because his company retaliated against him.

Paradigm: The First Retaliation Case

That last first began in 2012, when the head trader at Paradigm Capital Management reported securities-law violations to the SEC. What followed, the Commission later found, was a demotion dressed as a reassignment: Paradigm removed him from the trading desk, placed him in a compliance role, instructed him to investigate the very conduct he had reported, and then stripped him of supervisory duties and other responsibilities. The underlying case concerned 83 principal transactions between a hedge fund and an affiliated broker, blessed by a conflicts committee the SEC found lacked independence.

Thomas led the team representing the confidential employee through the SEC's first anti-retaliation enforcement action under the whistleblower program. Paradigm and its owner resolved the Commission's case for $2.2 million in June 2014. In April 2015, the Commission awarded Thomas's client more than $600,000 — the maximum thirty percent available in the covered action.

One case, and every promise of the program tested at once: confidential reporting, government enforcement, anti-retaliation protection, and a maximum statutory award. The representation demanded more than knowledge of the rule. Thomas's team connected the client's original information and retaliation evidence to the investigation while preserving confidentiality and the separate award claim — the central craft of whistleblower counsel, which is identifying firsthand knowledge, presenting evidence investigators can test, documenting employment consequences, and protecting eligibility through every stage of enforcement and claims.

Writing Rule 21F

Congress created the SEC whistleblower program in Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Act. Thomas, then serving in the SEC's Enforcement Division, sat on the teams that developed the proposed and final rules adopted in 2010 and 2011 — the work of turning Congress's command into instructions governing who may report, what counts as original information, how anonymity works, and when an award can be paid. Those rules still control the route every claimant takes through the program.

One dispute at the drafting table shaped everything after it. Companies wanted employees required to report internally before approaching the SEC. The Commission declined, reasoning that a mandatory rule could keep information from ever reaching the agency and expose some employees to retaliation. The final rules chose incentives over compulsion: an employee who reports internally first and sends the same information to the SEC within 120 days keeps credit for the earlier date, and the Commission may consider a claimant's use of internal compliance when setting an award. The rules also limit information obtained through legal privilege and restrict claims by auditors and compliance personnel, subject to defined exceptions — preserving a direct path to the government while rewarding internal reporting when it can operate safely.

Building and Preserving an Award Claim

Section 21F ties an award to original information that leads to a successful SEC action with monetary sanctions above $1 million; if the conditions are met, the Commission awards between ten and thirty percent of what it collects. It weighs the significance of the information, the claimant's assistance, deterrence, and participation in internal compliance, and it may reduce the percentage for unreasonable delay, culpability, or interference with a company's reporting process.

The procedure is where claims live or die. An anonymous whistleblower must submit through an attorney, who holds a signed Form TCR identifying the client while the initial submission proceeds nameless; the claimant must disclose that identity to the SEC before payment. After the Commission posts a Notice of Covered Action, a claimant generally has ninety days to apply. Thomas's practice addresses these points at the beginning, when the form of a submission, the evidence supporting causation, and the preservation of confidentiality can determine whether a claim succeeds years later.

The stakes of getting it right are visible in the numbers. In fiscal 2025, the SEC awarded more than $60 million to 48 people in 31 covered actions — while receiving about 27,000 tips.

Merrill Lynch: Billions Freed Every Week

The Merrill Lynch matter required command of both the whistleblower rules and the transactions being reported. Federal customer-protection rules required the brokerage to keep enough cash in a reserve account to meet its obligations to customers. The SEC found that Merrill used complex options trades lacking economic substance to shrink the required reserve — freeing billions of dollars each week for the firm's own use from 2009 through 2012, while customers' economic positions remained unchanged. The Commission also found that Merrill placed customer securities in clearing accounts subject to liens, and that its severance agreements contained language impeding former employees from communicating with regulators.

Merrill admitted wrongdoing and agreed in June 2016 to pay $415 million, with an independent compliance consultant and remedial changes to reserve calculations, custody of customer securities, and restrictions on contact with regulators. A later administrative order found that Merrill had altered versions of the options trade in ways that reduced the reserve requirement by 28 to 40 percent without adequate disclosure — the kind of technical sequence that only insider evidence can make enforceable.

Thomas represented three Merrill insiders. In March 2018, the SEC announced that two whistleblowers would share nearly $50 million and a third would receive more than $33 million — more than $83 million in all, the largest awards announced in the program's history to that point.

Suing to Protect the Program

When the SEC amended its whistleblower rules in September 2020, two provisions troubled Thomas: one narrowing when another agency's action could qualify as a related action for an SEC award, and one suggesting the Commission could consider an award's dollar size when setting its percentage. In January 2021 he filed an Administrative Procedure Act challenge, arguing the changes departed from the statute and could weaken the incentives that bring people with valuable information forward.

Later that year, SEC Chair Gary Gensler separately directed the staff to prepare revisions, concerned the two amendments could discourage whistleblowers. In August 2022, the Commission expanded the circumstances in which it may pay an award based on a related action and confirmed that an award's dollar amount may be considered only to increase it, never to reduce it. The adopted changes resolved precisely the two issues Thomas's suit had raised. Having written the rules and used them, he had now defended them.

Both Sides of the Exchange

Thomas is of counsel at DiCello Levitt in Washington, D.C., and chair of SEC Whistleblower Advocates PLLC, the firm he founded in 2022 and whose team joined DiCello Levitt in February 2026 — a move he has described as building the next generation of SEC whistleblower attorneys, so that the practice outlives the practitioner.

The road there ran through nearly every room where securities enforcement happens. He worked as a stockbroker while attending law school, served as a Navy judge advocate and rose to captain in the Navy Reserve, tried cases at the Justice Department, and served in the SEC's Enforcement Division as an assistant director and assistant chief litigation counsel. He earned his undergraduate degree from Bennington College and his law degree from Southwestern Law School.

He has now worked on both sides of the exchange between a person with evidence and the agency that can act on it: first among the staff who translated Section 922 into rules, then as counsel to the whistleblowers who rely on them. Paradigm tested retaliation. Merrill tested technical reserve transactions and restrictions on employee communications. The rule challenge tested the program's continuing incentives. His practice remains what it has been from the start — helping reliable evidence reach the SEC while preserving confidentiality, protection, and the award his clients have earned.