Case Studies

The first climate-change related securities class action against a major oil and gas company, Ramirez v. ExxonMobil Corporation, highlights how whistleblowers can identify potential securities fraud related to climate risks and oil and gas reserves.

The Shell reserves scandal shows that even the world’s oldest and largest oil and gas companies are not immune to the temptation to overstate their reserves.

Using the qui tam provision of the False Claims Act, a group of whistleblowers revealed a nationwide conspiracy by more than a dozen oil and gas companies to systematically defraud the government by underpaying leasing royalties.

Making false statements to obtain a permit, lease, or loan like BP did for the Deepwater Horizon rig falls under a powerful whistleblower provision, known as the reverse False Claims Act.

Chevron’s Gorgon gas project in Australia was supposed to generate enough tax revenue to facilitate personal tax cuts for every Australian. Instead, most of the profits were siphoned off into offshore tax havens.

An investigation into widespread corruption in the oil and gas industry revealed a scheme by six oil and gas companies to use a third party to pay and conceal bribes to foreign officials.

The U.S. government’s first prosecution for mineral-rights leases concerned the collaboration on bids between competing oil and gas companies in Western Colorado.

Oil & gas prices impact nearly every level of our economy, from financial investors to companies producing petroleum products to consumers paying for gas. Fixing prices in commodities markets as was allegedly done in one recent case can harm traders, investors and consumers.

Whistleblowers have successfully used reverse False Claims suits to stop industrial gas companies from dodging customs duties in cases such as Jackson vs. Linde.

A landmark investigation into Occidental Petroleum’s environmental disclosures revealed that major incidents of environmental damage can also help regulators identify equally significant financial fraud in liability disclosures.

Rio Tinto’s Mozambique coal scandal shows how executives under pressure could be tempted to commit fraud – and how internal whistleblowers can reveal the truth.

An investigation into the nation’s largest coal company revealed that it had knowingly not disclosed the full financial risks associated with new environmental regulations to shareholders over a period of several years.

A historic case against Kerr-McGee highlights the potential for a company to understate liabilities to spin them off and how such a scheme can lead to a multibillion-dollar liability.

Lenders have accused Murray Energy of fraudulent transfer and breach of fiduciary duty, as well as manipulating financial information to avoid violating a bankruptcy financing agreement.

From 2001 to 2011, several Minnesota businessmen solicited major investments in a clean coal machine that they knew didn’t work, committing securities fraud in the process.

FirstEnergy is an IOU headquartered in Akron, Ohio that operates several electricity generation and distribution subsidiaries throughout the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. It has recently been linked to a major bribery & racketeering scandal and is currently under investigation for securities fraud.

In 2016, SandRidge Energy Inc. became the first company to be charged by the SEC for retaliating against an internal whistleblower and one of the first companies to be charged for using illegal severance agreements to block whistleblowers from reporting to the SEC.

A securities class action lawsuit alleged that timber company Rayonier violated federal securities laws by concealing systemic over-harvesting in Washington state.

In a landmark case, U.S.-based Lumber Liquidators was fined $13 million under the Lacey Act for illegally importing hardwood flooring from the Russian Far East.

A recent NGO report alleges that protected timber illegally harvested by Chinese company dodged U.S. conservation laws via numerous middlemen.

A recent case concerning disappearing containers of rare wood from Gabon demonstrates the role that whistleblowers can play in combatting fraud in the timber industry.