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Considerably More Snitches Actually Getting Stitches Around The Office These Days

Last week, we discussed the whistleblower payout awarded to Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS employee who single-handedly made the government’s case against the Swiss bank re: tax evasion, scoring the US between $780 million and $5 billion, depending on how much credit you want to give him. Earlier in the month, Birkenfeld secured a $104 million bonus from the IRS for his assistance, though only after a lot of hoop jumping, nearly three years in a federal prison, and several months in a halfway house, prompting us to wonder how much money, if any, it would take to get you to blow the whistle on some colleagues playing it fast and loose with the law,* if you would do time for it, and, if so, how much? Today brings one more issue to consider, should you be seriously considering teaching your coworkers a lesson they'll never forget, which is: are you will to get your face rearranged and/or have your hand stapled to your desk? Because it will probably come to that. “The number one weapon used at work is the fist,” says Larry Barton, a professor and leading expert in workplace violence who estimates more than 1.2 million Americans were assaulted at work by a coworker in the past calendar year. The second most popular weapon? The stapler on your desk. A new report from the Ethics Resource Center shows that physical violence at work as retaliation against whistle blowing is on the rise. Since 2009, the percentage of people who’ve reported misconduct at work and were victims of physical harm jumped more than 25%. By these tallies, both fists and staplers have been getting quite the workout. Just something to think about. When Snitches Get Stitches: Physical Violence As Workplace Retaliation On The Rise [Forbes via Heidi Moore] *Be it securities laws or simply workplace etiquette, i.e. don't grab someone to chat for "just a quick sec" when they're clearly heading out the door to flee this asylum for the night.
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Last week, we discussed the whistleblower payout awarded to Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS employee who single-handedly made the government’s case against the Swiss bank re: tax evasion, scoring the US between $780 million and $5 billion, depending on how much credit you want to give him. Earlier in the month, Birkenfeld secured a $104 million bonus from the IRS for his assistance, though only after a lot of hoop jumping, nearly three years in a federal prison, and several months in a halfway house, prompting us to wonder how much money, if any, it would take to get you to blow the whistle on some colleagues playing it fast and loose with the law,* if you would do time for it, and, if so, how much? Today brings one more issue to consider, should you be seriously considering teaching your coworkers a lesson they'll never forget, which is: are you will to get your face rearranged and/or have your ear stapled to your spacebar?**

Because it will probably come to that.

“The number one weapon used at work is the fist,” says Larry Barton, a professor and leading expert in workplace violence who estimates more than 1.2 million Americans were assaulted at work by a coworker in the past calendar year. The second most popular weapon? The stapler on your desk. A new report from the Ethics Resource Center shows that physical violence at work as retaliation against whistle blowing is on the rise. Since 2009, the percentage of people who’ve reported misconduct at work and were victims of physical harm jumped more than 25%. By these tallies, both fists and staplers have been getting quite the workout.

Just something to think about.

When Snitches Get Stitches: Physical Violence As Workplace Retaliation On The Rise [Forbes via Heidi Moore]

*Be it securities laws or simply workplace etiquette laws, i.e. don't grab someone to chat for "just a quick sec" when they're clearly heading out the door to flee this asylum for the night.
**Just a for instance. Could be hand to desk, tongue to tie, foot to mouth, whatever. Relatedly, to the researchers studying these trends or the people who have actually done this: How does one make the decision to go with the stapler over the fist? Obviously any sort of history of violence is not going to look good on a résumé, but the stapler seems considerably more psychotic than the hand-as-weapon. You're not coming back from that and might as well have taken it upon yourself to remove someone's wisdom teeth with a pair of pliers, for how people are going to look at you moving forward.

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UBS Whistleblower's $104 Million Award Poses Interesting Conundrum For Would-Be Snitches

Remember Bradley Birkenfeld? He's the guy who single-handedly made the U.S. government’s case against UBS and forced the Swiss bank to hand over the names of thousands of tax cheats, which resulted in the US scoring $780 million from UBS and may have inspired some 33,000 Americans to "voluntarily disclose offshore accounts to the IRS, generating more than $5 billion." And yet, despite his assistance, Birkenfeld wasn't immediately thanked for a job well done. Instead, he was sentenced to forty months in prison (fair-ish, considering he showed a few clients how to avoid paying taxes himself) and told to piss off by the Internal Revenue Service, from whom he sought an award, because he was "not forthcoming about his own role in the scheme," even as a Justice Department attorney admitted that "...without Mr. Birkenfeld walking into the door of the Department of Justice in the summer of 2007, I doubt as of today that this massive fraud would have been discovered by the US government" (or as his lawyer put it, "They didn't know how to spell UBS until he showed up. He didn't just give them a piece of the puzzle. He gave them the entire puzzle"). Now, after doing 32 months at Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institution, getting let out early on account of "good-time credit," and living in a halfway house in New Hampshire, Birkenfeld has finally been thrown a bone. Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS AG banker who told the Internal Revenue Service how the bank helped thousands of Americans evade taxes, secured an IRS award of $104 million, an amount his lawyers said may be the largest ever for a U.S. whistle-blower. Birkenfeld told authorities how UBS bankers came to the U.S. to woo rich Americans, managed $20 billion of their assets, and helped them cheat the IRS. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2008, a year after reporting the bank’s conduct to the Justice Department, U.S. Senate, IRS and Securities and Exchange Commission. He was released from prison Aug. 1...Birkenfeld, 47, worked at Zurich-based UBS, the largest Swiss bank, for five years. He sought a reward from the IRS of as much as 30 percent of any taxes the agency recovered as a result of his whistle-blowing activities. Clearly this whole thing should stir up a few questions inside you all, chief among them: how much money would it take to get you to befriend or get yourself employed with some rogue people so you can blow the whistle on them? Would you do any time for it? If so, how much? And are we talking Club Fed or a place where your roommate spoons you every night? UBS Whistle-Blower Secures $104 Million Award From IRS [Bloomberg]

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