Whistleblower Who Triggered Massive Global Investigation Is Now In Prison
Natalie “May” Edwards and her husband, Dave, arrive at Federal Prison Camp, Alderson, in West Virginia on the morning of Sept. 3, 2021.
Former Treasury Department official Natalie “May” Edwards said she is a whistleblower who sent suspicious activity reports to BuzzFeed News after trying in vain to work through lawful channels. Her actions became the basis for the global FinCEN Files investigation.
by David Mack
Natalie “May” Edwards has made a pact with her 16-year-old daughter: Every night before bed for the next six months, each will say a quiet prayer at the exact same time. Her daughter will be doing so from home in Virginia. Edwards will be doing so from a women’s federal prison in West Virginia.
“I am emotionally prepared as far as entering the facility and meeting the other people,” Edwards, 43, told BuzzFeed News in an interview on Thursday evening. “I am not emotionally prepared for being separated from my daughter and my husband and my immediate family.”
A former Treasury Department official, Edwards — whose decision to leak a trove of highly confidential government documents to BuzzFeed News prompted a massive investigation that exposed how dirty money moves through the global banking system and helped spur legislative action in the US and beyond — reported to Federal Prison Camp, Alderson, on Friday morning to begin her six-month sentence. The minimum-security prison is where Martha Stewart and Billie Holiday both served time.
The information she provided to BuzzFeed News formed the basis of the FinCEN Files, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest honor.
But many across the US are not familiar with Edwards. Labeling her “the forgotten whistleblower,” the Washington Post described her in July as “one of the most important whistleblowers of our era, and yet hardly anyone remembers her name.”
Despite losing her freedom and most, if not all, of her family’s finances waging a legal fight, Edwards maintained she had no regrets, believing her actions will help thwart future criminals and terrorists. “I’m absolutely proud of what I did,” she said, “and I know American lives have been saved.”
Her husband, Dave Edwards, said that he believed his wife was a political prisoner and that prosecutors had set out to destroy his family in order to set an example. “You’re sentencing her to prison because you don’t want other whistleblowers to come forward. I see how this works,” he said. “She’s a 43-year-old mother of a 16-year-old girl who has lost everything. What crime is she going to commit by being in home incarceration?”
“This is a personal vendetta against her,” he said. “You’re gonna put away a lady that got no money, that had no motive other than accountability, that lost everything — now she’s gonna lose her freedom for six months. All so you can stop people coming forward. You’re the ones who are gonna have to look into the mirror.”