Johnson & Johnson may be making headlines for the growing number of lawsuits being filed over the company’s drug Risperdal, but it’s news of a whistleblower clearing millions that’s really flooding the media.

Judy Doetterl, a former J&J employee agreed to wear a wire for internal meetings, and as a result has just been awarded almost $30 million in whistleblower compensation. During a government settlement which was just reached with J&J over its allegedly improper marketing of Risperdal, it was revealed that without the whistleblower’s information, evidence of J&J’s illegal kickback schemes and marketing tactics would have  never  been so clear.

Risperdal is a popular anti-psychotic drug that was extremely profitable for the company, but the bevy of Risperdal lawsuits showcase that everything wasn’t right. The whistleblower agreed to a recording device in order to capture the details of internal marketing presentations. According to the government, Doetterl’s recordings revealed that J&J was in a conspiracy to market the drug for uses not approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

However, Doetterl wasn’t alone. There were many other J&J employees who filed their own whistleblower lawsuits, pushing the government for a full investigation. They saw the illegal practices happening time and again, but felt powerless and urged the government to step in. When the Department of Justice (DOJ) pursued the claims, everything began unraveling. It turns out that J&J was paying doctors to push Risperdal on consumers.

In November 2013, DOJ and J&J jointly announced a massive $2.2 billion settlement to take care of those illicit marketing campaigns. In total, this included $485 million in forfeitures and criminal fines as well as $1.72 billion in civil settlements around the country. It’s also been proven that J&J committed Medicare fraud as part of their tactics, which was part of the civil claims.

Being a whistleblower can be dangerous since it’s unclear what may happen if Doetterl and the others were found out. Their compensation is legal via the quit tam provisions of the False Claims Act. Their compensation is also due to the fact that the DOJ wouldn’t have a clue about J&J’s actions if it weren’t for the whistleblowers. As a J&J employee, sales reps make around $150,000 per year. Doetterl made the most for her whistleblower compensation, while others made a smidge beneath her at around $29 million—a few others received $20 million.

Bloomberg News reports that Doetterl agreed to wear a wire and work with the DOJ because she thought what the company was doing was wrong. As for the millions? She considers that a nice bonus, but says it wasn’t for the money. She also says she was personally encouraged to push Risperdal “off label” in order to treat dementia, which would have made the drug even more profitable.

As a sales rep, Doetterl saw her position within J&J as a very powerful one—at least where consumers were concerned. She says that sales rep like herself were well compensated for those off-label sales, and it’s unclear just how many of her peers took the bait (and how many dementia patients should have received a different medication).

Back in 2004 was when Doetterl first wore the wire as she attended a Dallas meeting along with other sales reps. The no holds barred meetings is where reps were encouraged to push off-label drugs as well as reveal the illegal tactics which helped skyrocket Risperdal in the big pharma world. According to investigators, treating Riseprdal like this led to risky use of the drug which was completely unnecessary and endangered countless lives. Dementia is a condition suffered by thousands of Americans, and treating the pharma world like a game controlled by J&J was both immoral and illegal.

Early Warning Signs

The DOJ have been heavily investigating J&J since 2004. The first red flag was the alleged kickback “scheme” that J&J was playing with Omnicare, the country’s biggest nursing home drug provider. Omnicare settled with the DOJ in 2009 for this scheme, and the DOJ next set its sights to J&J. It turns out that the company paid Omnicare millions to also push Risperdals use in an off-label fashion, targeting doctors at nursing homes. Those kickbacks were buried as “data fees and education fees” as well as funds used to attend meetings with Omnicare.

In early 2010, the DOJ moved to file a civil False Claims Act complaint against J&J, and also accused the company of illegally promoting the drug as safe to use with children well before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave approval for that use. Sadly, the biggest victims are young boys and men—this population was largely prescribed the drug and a side effect (which wasn’t mentioned) involves the growth of male breasts. “Man boobs” or gynecomastia requires surgery to correct which can be considered cosmetic in some instances.