Whistleblower Attorney Explains How Facebook Enables Illegal Wildlife Trade

Washington, D.C. May 11, 2018. Stephen M. Kohn, a partner in the whistleblower rights law firm of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, spoke with ABC News investigative reporter Lisa Fletcher about the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) whistleblower complaint against Facebook.

The SEC whistleblower complaint, filed in August of 2017, details how Facebook failed to implement the necessary and required internal controls to curtail criminal activity on its site.

“You can go on Facebook today and you’ll see every single endangered species for sale,” Kohn told ABC News. “Some live, some dead. It’s pretty shocking. What we saw immediately was that Facebook was most likely the number one source of trafficking worldwide.”

In a previously released statement, about the SEC whistleblower complaint against Facebook, Kohn explained:

“As a result of having logged thousands of posts for illegal ivory on Facebook, the company enables illegal wildlife sellers to connect to and market to customers in a space that is anonymous, global, and free of regulation.”

“Facebook is doing nothing about this, and neither is law enforcement. It’s a disgrace.” 

Watch the ABC News investigative report: Whistleblower accuses Facebook of connecting wildlife traffickers with buyers and sellers.

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Stephen Kohn is an internationally recognized expert in whistleblower law who authored an award-winning Environmental Law Review article explaining the importance of using qui tam whistleblower laws, or whistleblower rewards, to combat illegal wildlife trafficking (Monetary Rewards for Wildlife Whistleblowers: A Game-Changer in Wildlife Trafficking Detection and Deterrence). Mr. Kohn, working as the pro bono executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, oversaw the implementation of the Global Wildlife Whistleblower Program. This program was named a Grand Prize Winner in the 2016 Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge , an initiative of USAID in partnership with the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and TRAFFIC.