Law360, New York (September 29, 2014, 10:00 AM EDT) -- On Sept. 17, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder raised the prospect of amending FIRREA — the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 — to increase its whistleblower awards with the goal of further incentivizing cooperation in financial fraud cases.[1] While FIRREA has become the U.S. Justice Department's "go-to" statute for pursuing financial fraud cases, its whistleblower awards are relatively stingy by today's standards, and they are capped by statute at $1.6 million. In contrast, the department's other key civil fraud statute — the False Claims Act — authorizes whistleblower awards up to 30 percent of the government's recovery, without limit....