Never thought about this, but I guess you might be on the hook for fraud if you violated an agreement for profit. That is, an employee violating an NDA for profit might be considered committing fraud against their employer. It's strange - Tether seems shady but I don't think Hindenburg's offer is on firm ethical or legal ground. What if Hindenberg offered $1M for access to a private list of donors to a [prominent abortion rights organization]?
But now that I think about it, why doesn't every successful private contract enforcement action end in a public prosecution for fraud?
> That is, an employee violating an NDA for profit might be considered committing fraud against their employer.
I don't think so. Fraud would require an element of deception. Corporate espionage seems like a more probable avenue. IANAL, so I'm not sure who bears the liability here: the buyer, the seller, or both.
> What if Hindenberg offered $1M for access to a private list of donors to a [prominent abortion rights organization]?
This isn't equivalent. They're buying information, not selling it. Specifically, they're buying evidence of illegal acts.
Also, personally, I think there's a wide gap between the reasonable expectations of privacy for a business and an individual.
> But now that I think about it, why doesn't every successful private contract enforcement action end in a public prosecution for fraud?
There's usually not an intent to deceive, so it's not a crime. Also, the contract should specify the damages for violating it. The victim agreed to those penalties at the time of signing, so it wouldn't generally be in the interest of justice to add further penalties unless the behavior was so egregious as to override the victim's choice of penalty.
The accused can also often afford their own lawyers, which makes securing convictions a lot harder.
And there's a self-reinforcing penalty. If you have enough proof to get a conviction, you have enough proof to leak the leaker's name and make them unemployable.
And the criminal justice system is already stressed. These would likely end up getting plead down to something insignificant, because our justice system depends on most cases not going to trial.
There just isn't much to add from a criminal prosecution, and it would cost a lot.
An NDA would be a civil matter, I would think. It is a remedy for monetary damages, right?
Of course I have no idea if offering someone a large sum of money to violate any kind of contract is in any way illegal or even actionable in civil law since the person can always refuse the money and uphold their contract. If it made you criminally liable, wouldn’t every job offer to someone under contract with a competitor lend you in jail?
IANAL so offer money to break NDAs at your own risk.
> Of course I have no idea if offering someone a large sum of money to violate any kind of contract
Hindenburg isn't expressly offering the money for someone to break some contract or NDA. They're just offering money for information. Yes, the person with the information may have to break an NDA to share the information, but that doesn't seem like Hindenburg's problem. It's also possible that some insider with knowledge isn't under an NDA and would be willing to share information for $1M.
But now that I think about it, why doesn't every successful private contract enforcement action end in a public prosecution for fraud?