In March 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission reached new heights in its program for rewarding whistleblowers who expose corporate wrongdoing, paying out what at the time was a record-setting bounty of $83 million to three whistleblowers who helped the agency bring an enforcement action years earlier against Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch brokerage unit.

Behind the award was a fourth figure: Jordan Thomas, a partner at the law firm Labaton Sucharow and former SEC official, who had represented the three whistleblowers and stood to bring in a multimillion-dollar payday.