Wall Street Whistleblowers Tip Off SEC — But Hear Nothing Back

Janice Shell likes to sniff out fraud. An art historian by training, she once spent her days digging through Renaissance archives in Italy. Now 74, retired and living in suburban Philadelphia, she pores over financial filings instead. She hunts for sketchy penny stocks, then flags them in tart commentaries on message boards such as Investorshub.com. Shell has been remarkably prescient. In several cases, the US Securities and Exchange Commission later sanctioned companies she’d called out—and for the same reasons.

In 2011, on TheStreetSweeper.com, Shell questioned how Miller Energy Resources Inc., an oil and natural gas driller in Tennessee, valued its ...