Maraya Best specializes in representing whistleblowers under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Commodity Exchange Act, the Dodd-Frank Act, the IRS whistleblower law, and the False Claims Act. She has a special expertise in representing international whistleblowers. She has worked closely with whistleblowers and the investigating federal agencies in disclosing illegal activities that have occurred in numerous foreign countries.
Although almost all of her clients are anonymous and confidential, she assisted in the successful representation of Alex Chepurko, who obtained a judgment on behalf of the United States for $69.6 million in a False Claims Act qui tam lawsuit. Maraya has also provided highly effective assistance in the representation of Howard Wilkinson in his historic money laundering case.
Maraya received her JD from Northeastern University School of Law in 2018 and began her career at Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto as the 2018 recipient of the highly prestigious and competitive Estelle S. Kohn Memorial Fellowship awarded by Northeastern University School of Law. She went on to worked at KKC for several years as an Associate Attorney.
After serving as an attorney with the United States Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division for five years, where she assisted in the prosecution of hate crimes and law enforcement misconduct; led investigations of civil rights cold cases; and directed the implementation of a civil rights records act, Maraya has returned to KKC as a Partner.
Promoting International Qui Tam Whistleblowing
Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto has played an instrumental role in advancing whistleblower rights worldwide. Currently the partners represent whistleblowers from every continent on earth (except Antarctica) in pursuing whistleblower reward cases under U.S. laws.
Steve Kohn has been sponsored by the U.S. Department of State to promote whistleblowing on a world-wide scale, including special seminars and programs in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia and Thailand. He has given major keynote addresses in Peru and Greece and presented in numerous international conferences and has testified on behalf of whistleblowers before the European Parliament and the Danish Parliament. Mike Kohn has made major international presentations in Poland, South Korea and Israel. The firm filed extensive comments supporting greater whistleblower protections in the now-approved European Directive on Whistleblowing.
Whistleblower attorney Stephen M. Kohn and partners of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto regularly advise congress on crafting whistleblower laws. And play an instrumental role in drafting whistleblower protection laws, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, and the Dodd-Frank Act.
SEC & IRS Rulemaking
During the Dodd-Frank rulemaking process, our partners worked closely with the SEC to create an effective whistleblower program. Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto’s partners met personally with each of the five SEC Commissioners. They presented them with detailed reports and proposals setting forth rules that were essential to make the law work for Dodd-Frank whistleblowers as intended by Congress. Furthermore, Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto’s whistleblower attorneys seek to protect and enhance legal protections for tax fraud whistleblowers. Our firm has filed numerous internal revenue service rulemaking petitions, filed extensive briefs to the IRS and testified at IRS rulemaking hearsing to strengthen the tax whistleblower program.
In recognition of the growing importance of whistleblower litigation, The National Law Journal named the whistleblower attorney and advocacy law firm of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto as one of top fifty plaintiff’s law firms in the United States. The firm’s partners were officially named as among “America’s Elite Trial Lawyers.” In its September 29, 2014 article, “Elite Trial Lawyers: The 50 Leading Plaintiff’s Firms in America,” the National Law Journal named Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto as one of the firm’s “doing the most creative and most important work in the courtroom.”
- 2013-2020 – A-V Preeminent, Martindale-Hubbell®
- 2014 – “Elite Trial Lawyers” Designation, National Law Journal (Awarded to KKC LLP)
- 2014 – America’s Most Honored Professionals, American Registry (Awarded to KKC LLP)
- 2009 – Top Attorneys, Washington DC Super Lawyers (Awarded to KKC LLP)
- 2008 – Friend of the IEEE Award
- 2003 – “Hot List” of Plantiff’s Law Firms, National Law Journal
Read Maraya’s Publications at:
What Clients are Saying
“When you’re in danger, you need someone you can trust, who isn’t afraid, and who knows how to fight. KKC always has my back.”
“Most law firms it really is all about billable hours. For these guys it’s all about the justice.”
“Thanks [KKC] from the bottom of my heart. I think if you ever have a whistleblowing claim they are the folks to take care of it for you.”
“In my world, courage is spelled KKC. They go up against the most powerful adversaries and win.”
Maraya’s Latest Thinking
What Makes A Whistleblower Law Successful In Today’s Globalized World? Part III
Originally published in Mondaq Part III: Tailored free speech and evidentiary standards should be explicitly incorporated into whistleblower legislation to ensure that whistleblowers are not chilled from making vital disclosures Any state considering a new or updated whistleblower law should consider certain basic principles underlying successful anti-retaliation laws, namely, whistleblower protection laws should adequately address the threat of retaliatory lawsuits and legal tactics and prohibit restrictive non-disclosure agreements that prevent or "chill" employee disclosures of violations of law. In enacting whistleblower laws, many states make the mistake of simply applying existing laws on free speech and ignoring the impact that retaliatory lawsuits, such as libel suits, have on whistleblowers. In order to make sure that whistleblowers are not chilled from making disclosures of violations of law and threats to public safety, tailored laws are essential for any whistleblower program to be successful. First, nations considering enacting or modifying whistleblower laws ...
What Makes A Whistleblower Law Successful In Today’s Globalized World? Part II
Originally posted in Mondaq Reward programs for whistleblowers are in nations' best interests and serve as a form of anti-retaliation insurance for whistleblowers. As explored in Part I of this series, whistleblower laws around the world are nonexistent or largely inadequate and focus primarily on post-retaliation remedies, which often cannot truly make a whistleblower whole and often raise the specter of prolonged and costly litigation against a very powerful and well-financed employer. This in turn has a chilling effect on the willingness of employees to report fraud and take advantage of anti-retaliation laws. To overcome these barriers to whistleblowing, following the overwhelming success of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission's whistleblower reward program, nations creating new whistleblower laws should begin by implementing an award provision for successful whistleblower tips (as recently implemented by Lithuania). An effective provision might read: If the whistleblower's original information is the proximate cause of ...
Rights Groups File Complaint Against ICE, Giving Credence to Whistleblower Allegations of Forced Hysterectomies
Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, South Georgia Immigrant Support Network filed a complaint with ICE officials condemning the inhumane conditions at the private Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. This complaint is based, in large part, on the allegations of nurse-turned-whistleblower, Dawn Wooten. Amongst the shocking allegations is that detained women, who often don’t speak English, were receiving hysterectomies at an extremely high rate without informed consent or medical necessity. This harkens back to the U.S. funded forced sterilization of Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Native American women until the 1970s, as well as the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Therefore, these allegations are not as outrageous as they may seem and must be investigated with the utmost urgency. Ms. Wooten is incredibly brave for collecting information on the violations and reporting them to rights groups. Ms. Wooten’s report is particularly important because it ...
Our Client Received the Largest Whistleblower Reward in World History of $104 Million
Bradley Birkenfeld broke the back of Swiss bank secrecy. He was the first Swiss banker to file a case under the IRS whistleblower law. The results were unprecedented. UBS bank (at the time the largest bank in the world) had to pay a fine of $780 million. They also had to close all known U.S. accounts, and for the first time in history, the bank turned over the names of 4450 U.S. taxpayers for prosecution in the United States. Mr. Birkenfeld obtained the largest ever individual qui tam whistleblower award in history, $104 million.
Pro Bono Public Service
Dedicated to protecting whistleblowers, the National Whistleblower Center (NWC) was founded in 1988 by three experienced whistleblower-rights attorneys, Stephen M. Kohn, Michael D. Kohn and David K. Colapinto. Mary Jane was selected as the NWC’s first Public Interest Law Fellow, and soon became a major leader in the NWC. She currently is the NWC corporate Treasure and serves on its Board of Directors. She founded the whistleblower protection blog, and for years managed many of the NWC’s highly successful programs.