David Paul Weber is an American criminalist, and the former Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He was the Principal Investigator of a $2.6 million grant by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to test various white collar crime interventions concerning elder financial exploitation and high-tech crime. He is a Teaching Professor at the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University.
In the past, Weber was a whistleblower who reported allegations about foreign espionage against the stock exchanges, and misconduct in the Bernard L. Madoff and R. Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme investigations. In June 2013, the SEC settled with Weber his whistleblower protection and U.S. District Court lawsuits, paying him one of the largest federal employee whistleblower settlements ever.
On August 5, 2021, Weber met with the President, Speaker of the House, and Senators at the signing of H.R. 3325, the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal for those officers who lost their lives at the Capitol Insurrection, as he represents one of the deceased police officers and his widow. He again met with the President on January 6, 2023, when his client was awarded, posthumously, the Presidential Citizens Medal. Ultimately, he was successful in having his client Police Officer Jeffrey L. Smith designated as having died in the line of duty by the District of Columbia in March 2022, and in August 2023 by the U.S. Department of Justice, having successfully advocated for Congress to change the Public Safety Officers Benefit Act to allow benefits to families of law enforcement to have died from silent injuries. In June 2025, Weber obtained a jury verdict against Officer Smith's assailant in Washington, DC, federal court.
Weber is a forensic accounting professor at the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University. In the past, as part of his teaching duties at Salisbury University, he was a special investigator for the Maryland State's Attorneys Offices in two adjoining counties, and a Virginia financial crimes state prosecutor in the neighboring Virginia county. He supervised his students who acted as intern investigators on financial crime cases.
Education Weber graduated from Syracuse University with an undergraduate degree in criminal justice in 1995. He received a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1998 and a Doctor of Business Administration at the University of Florida in 2023. Weber's dissertation was awarded the best forensic accounting disseration award by the American Accounting Association.
Career Early career Weber worked as a National Park Service ranger in upstate New York while going to law school, and previously at NYPD's Central Park Precinct. After graduation from law school, Weber became a law clerk to New York United States District Judge Neal P. McCurn working on criminal and civil cases. When his judge sat by designation on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Weber assisted with criminal and civil appeals in 1998 and 1999. Subsequently, Weber was Special Counsel for Enforcement for more than ten years at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, at the United States Department of the Treasury. He followed that up by practicing as Supervisory Counsel and Chief of Enforcement Unit I for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), responsible for overseeing all banking enforcement activities and investigations involving state chartered banks and bank failures for the western half of the United States.
Securities and Exchange Commission Weber then became the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the Office of Inspector General, directing all criminal, civil and administrative investigations into fraud, waste and abuse in SEC programs and operations, and supervising the Office's investigative staff. In this role, he served as the SEC's chief investigator. In January 2012, H. David Kotz, SEC Inspector General during the previous four years, resigned and returned to the private sector as managing director of Gryphon Strategies. His resignation came in the midst of questions as to his conduct, as then-current and former SEC employees had complained that Kotz initiated investigations without credible evidence and unnecessarily tainted people's reputations.
Madoff accusations, cyber compromise, and retaliatory paid leave In March 2012, Weber alleged improper conduct by Kotz, asserting that Kotz may have had personal relationships that tainted SEC investigations of the Bernard Madoff and R. Allen Stanford Ponzi schemes. Kotz said Weber's accusations were "completely and utterly ludicrous and untrue."
In May 2012, Weber was placed on administrative paid leave for purportedly creating a "hostile work environment." U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) then sent a letter to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, asking for a copy of the "security threat evaluation" on the basis of which Weber was banned from the SEC's offices. The SEC refused to provide the supposed threat evaluation against Weber to Congress. Later, it was revealed that the supposed threat evaluation found that Weber was not a threat, did not create a hostile work environment, and could return to work. Ultimately, as part of a federal court settlement, the SEC rescinded his termination, but Weber decided to enter academia and remain in private practice instead.
Williams report Weber's allegations against Kotz led the SEC to bring in Inspector General David Williams of the U.S. Postal Service to conduct an independent, outside review. The 2012 Williams report concluded that Kotz had in fact violated ethics rules by overseeing investigations that involved people with whom Kotz had "personal relationships."
In addition, the Williams report looked at separate allegations that Weber had created a hostile work environment at the SEC. It did not find any evidence that Weber's conduct was improper or triggered security concerns. The report did not substantiate hostile work environment and threatening behavior accusations made against Weber. Finally, the Williams report found that Weber's reports concerning deficient SEC computer security had merit.
Whistleblower allegations Weber claimed SEC officials intended to reprise against him for revealing misconduct within the SEC in the Madoff and Stanford investigations, perjury by Chairman Mary Schapiro in testimony before the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and to delay the filing of reports to Congress on the gross misconduct of William J. Fagan (Chief of Security Services for the SEC), Jeff Heslop (Chief Operating Officer of the SEC), and Weber's investigation into the SEC for exposing potential vulnerabilities of the NYSE and NASDAQ Stock Exchange.
According to Weber, Heslop was the target of at least two OIG investigations, including whether Heslop had improperly steered work to Booz Allen Hamilton. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee probed the allegations. Chairman Darrell Issa noted in a Thomson Reuters' report that the House investigation about the suspicious and wasteful hiring of the Booz Allen consultants was "broadly compatible" with the Weber lawsuit allegations.
According to Weber, Fagan was engaged in pay to play schemes in hiring private security contractors, as well as substantial nepotism in the hiring of security staff. Weber also alleged that Fagan engaged in a cover up of multiple sexual assaults of guard staff and a female visitor to the SEC who was assaulted on a late night due to insufficient security at the SEC's Union Station headquarters. Fagan then used the same private security contractor hired under the pay to play scheme to supposedly investigate Weber, a direct conflict of interest.
NYSE Euronext hired former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to make sure sensitive exchange data were not breached after U.S. securities regulators left their computers unencrypted. "Everything was on those laptops," said one exchange official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You could find the system architecture and technology maps of both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, information about their key data centers, their emergency plans. It's virtually everything you need to know if you were a terrorist looking to sabotage the U.S. capital markets." An SEC spokesman later confirmed that the security lapses identified by Weber did occur.
Dismissal and lawsuit Weber worked at the SEC until October 31, 2012, when, months after becoming a whistleblower accusing the SEC of significant misconduct in the Madoff and Stanford investigations, cyber compromise of NASDAQ, as well as SEC's most senior management misconduct, he was fired for supposedly unrelated reasons. He sued the SEC in federal court in Washington, D.C., in November 2012, saying he was wrongfully terminated and retaliated against for trying to investigate misconduct at the SEC and for coming forward as a whistleblower. Less than two weeks after Weber's suits were filed, the Chairman of the SEC resigned.
Kotz responded to the civil lawsuit saying that: "for some inexplicable reason, my name has been dragged through the mud in the most ludicrous and unbelievable allegations." The SEC said it would "vigorously contest" the lawsuit. Yet, the allegations against Kotz were proven to be true, and the SEC did not contest the lawsuit, or even file an answer. Instead of vigorously contesting the lawsuit as promised, in June 2013, the SEC settled the lawsuits with Weber by paying him, reinstating him from the date of his dismissal, and clearing his personnel and security records. Weber purportedly received the third largest federal employee whistleblower payment to date. Despite being reinstated, Weber decided not to return to his former position, instead becoming a university faculty member, and growing his forensic investigations practice. In October 2015, Syracuse University College of Law named Weber as one of the first year's recipients of the new "Syracuse Law Alumni Honors" award for "distinguished achievements."
Post-SEC, military service, law practice, publications, and university teaching
Journalism and writing In 2015–2016, as a financial expert for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Weber analyzed a number of loan agreements included among the Panama Papers, a project awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2017. A book was later written about the Panama Papers, Secrecy World, in which Weber was featured. In 2019, Secrecy World was made into a major motion picture, The Laundromat, for which Weber served as the technical consultant, and played a small cameo.