Feds award JPMorgan Chase whistleblower a record $30M

A financial investigator is getting a cool $30 million — on top of another $48 million he already received from the SEC — for his role in exposing a mutual fund scam being run by JPMorgan Chase in 2011, The Post has learned.

Edward Siedle, a Florida attorney who has taken on pension funds for overcharging beneficiaries, told The Post he was the whistleblower who successfully brought evidence of conflicts of interest to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“I’m the one who blew the whistle,” Siedle said. “I filed the original whistleblower complaint in 2011 and worked with the CFTC on it for several years.”

The awards come from a $307 million settlement between JPMorgan and regulators after the bank steered clients toward their own investment funds that cost more than those managed by competitor banks.

The award is the largest ever for the agency, and adds up to what may be the largest-ever payday for someone exposing wrongdoing through regulators’ whistleblower offices.

It also comes just weeks after government regulators have moved to limit the size of whistleblower awards, which can range from 10 percent to 30 percent of a final settlement.

The program came out of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and has been a thorn in Wall Street banks’ side for encouraging workers to speak up about wrongdoing.

Siedle said he has filed about two whistleblower suits a year since the program started, and has no immediate plans for the award.

“I’m not going to do anything, man,” he said. “I’ve had a few big paydays in my past. There’s not going to be any conspicuous consumption going on.”

He does plan on using the money to keep pressure on Wall Street’s bad guys, though.

“Winning these big awards allows me to do more forensic investigations,” he added.

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