That doesn’t sound very appealing.

A lot of people in Wall Street, especially the ones with access to the kind of information to become a good whistleblower, make $500k+/year.

That means those people are actually very unlikely to want to tell on others, unless maybe they are already on their way out.

This appears to assume that the whistleblower would have to leave the company afterward, which may not be justified given (a) the strong anti-retaliatory protections, (b) the highly-regulated nature of Wall Street, and (c) the nature of these settlements. Maybe they're shuffled off to the bench until retirement, though.

Again, I don't know anything, though. I just appreciate the game theory.

Seems like they could blackmail the perp for 30-100% instead, or get it on it 50/50.

I don't have direct experience, but the first option reminds me of regex ("now you have two problems"), and the second looks like a fragile coalition.

I also don't have direct experience, but I would guess some of the same things that motivate someone to run afoul of the SEC would motivate someone else to conspire with them rather than "kill the golden goose."