rollingstone | She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of
keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't
take it anymore.
"It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'"
Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her
late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious
sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to
struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a
common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a
whistle-blower.
Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of
white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion
as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from
hearing.
Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann
first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive
criminal securities fraud" in the bank's mortgage operations.
Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she's kept her mouth shut
since then. "My closest family and friends don't know what I've been
living with," she says. "Even my brother will only find out for the
first time when he sees this interview."
Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not
exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale.
That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the
pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.
She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like
the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed
Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by
officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief
architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender,
secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something
always got in the way," Fleischmann says.
