Whistleblower Appellate Court Filing

Hi, my name is Gene Schaefer and I am raising money to fund an attorney's retainer for me and two other wrongfully terminated employees to have legal representation in a filing with the Appellate Court seeking recognition as whistleblowers.

In 2017, after uncovering and reporting systemic theft to our employer as part of our jobs, we were fired and our former employer buried the report. We filed with the US Department of Labor, but they rejected our claim stating we only reported systemic theft and reporting of theft is not identified as whistleblower-protected activity. Despite reporting employees were trading envelopes of cash for company property and that our employer is a publicly traded financial institution and we reported in writing that the removal of bank property was confirmed, and five employees were confirming the theft, the US Department of Labor still decided we were not whistleblowers because the Department of Labor did not recognize any fraud involved.

We have since engaged the advice and guidance of retired Appellate Judge David Saxe, and his co-counsel Gayle Pollack of Morrison Cohen, LLP. With his guidance, the three of us who are trying to continue the fight are interested in pursuing an appeal outside the US Department of Labor. We believe their narrow definition of Bank Fraud, Fraud in general and Whistleblowers needs to be questioned before a Judge in the US Court of Appeals. We do not believe the law that was written to protect shareholders, employees who report criminal activity, and reports of abuse of positions of authority should be hampered with artificial arbitrary hurdles that have no basis in the law or regulations. The US Department of Labor has decided we did not use the phrase "fraud" before we were terminated, and we did not identify we reported anything but theft, so we can not be recognized by the US Department of Labor as Whistleblowers.

As stated by Honorable Judge Saxe (Ret.), "When an employee uses their position to withhold, disguise, or prevent the discovery of information they were required to share to shield a criminal act from exposure, that is textbook fraud."

We have been battling this fight for 6 years. This is the last opportunity to be heard. Our only hope is that a Judge outside the US Department of Labor can review our case and position and compare it to the position of the Agency and the letter and intent of the Law. If the US Department of Labor doesn't recognize four bank employees who all reported the same criminal employee activity to hide they are stealing from the bank, what would qualify as Bank Fraud?

We are running out of time and money at this point. We have one final legal path of opportunity to seek protection under the law. At this point, this fight has cost us our careers of 20+ years. We are exclusively bearing the penalty of reporting a crime rather than those who broke the law, simply because we went to our supervisors instead of going outside of the company and reporting the crime directly to the Police, Regulators or FBI.