Seven years ago H. Dean Steinke, a rising employee and former district sales manager for Merck, put his career on hold by blowing the whistle on his former employee’s unethical marketing practices. Today, his conscious finally paid off when Merck agreed to pay $671 million to settle accusations of overcharging government programs such as Medicare, and bribing doctors to use its products. For his troubles, Steinke was given 20 percent of that sum, an amount just over $68 million.
“He did it because he really, truly thought that Merck was doing the wrong thing and he just couldn’t abide by it, even though he was putting his career on hold,” said Steinke’s lawyer, Steven Cohen of Chicago.
The important thing about this is that Steinke’s reward just gave a lot of incentive for employees to report wrong-doing at their own companies. This is a welcome change of pace compared to the all-too-common story of careers ending, marriages falling apart or the generally depressing fallout by being a whistle blower (if you want to see Hollywood’s take, watch ‘The Insider’ starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino).
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