A whistleblower’s quest for reinvention and resilience

After pharmaceutical sales rep Noelle Webb blew the whistle on her employer for fraudulently marketing pain medication, she faced retaliation and job loss. As she contemplated her next career move, Webb embraced her love for dogs to reinvent her life and forge a new path as a service dog trainer. What ACFE’s 2026 Sentinel Award recipient learned about the human-canine bond could be the key to helping fellow whistleblowers withstand the turbulence of workplace retaliation.

When Noelle Webb first accused her employer, drug manufacturer Depomed (now Assertio Therapeutics), of illegally marketing opioid pain medications, the U.S. was deep into a yearslong epidemic of opioid use. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens were addicted to drugs that, in many cases, had been prescribed to them by their doctor. Thousands had died from overdoses. [See “How fraud fueled an epidemic of opioid addiction” at the end of this article.]

But Webb’s brave action to call out wrongdoing wasn’t greeted with gratitude or even a half-hearted pledge from her managers to follow up on the matter. Instead, she was marginalized at work.

First, Depomed management transferred her to another division within the company, which required her to travel three hours to and from work every day. With the extra time added to her daily commute, Webb struggled to meet her sales goals. Then, the former award-winning sales rep received a series of poor performance reviews from her manager and was forced into remedial training for a job she’d successfully executed for nearly two decades. Webb submitted her resignation.

Behind the scenes, Webb’s personal life was in turmoil. Her beloved golden retriever died. Her parents passed away. Without a job, she and her family struggled financially and had to move. One of her sons died suddenly from an undiagnosed illness. She discovered that another son was grappling with his own addiction to opioid drugs.

“All this happened during my whistleblower case,” Webb says in an interview with Fraud Magazine. “In a way, these other tragedies occupied me so completely, that the whistleblower case became secondary. But, make no mistake, when you become a whistleblower, it shrouds everything else in your life.” She wondered how she’d endure it. She wondered what she’d do next. 

Webb then realized something: She knew she couldn’t go back to pharmaceutical sales, and with her first qui tam suit under the False Claims Act (FCA) subsequently dismissed, Webb now had the freedom to forge a new path. “I decided to do something I liked.”

What Webb liked more than anything in the world was dogs. She decided to call organizations that trained service dogs for military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or physical disabilities and offer her volunteer services.

“One of the things most striking to me while working with veterans was how shut down they were,” Webb says. “These people had been harmed emotionally and physically. You could feel their anger and sadness. Looking back, that’s how I felt. I was angry and sad. I didn’t even realize it at the time.”

Interactions with the service dogs gave the veterans confidence to venture out into the world again. “When you’re beaten down, especially by retaliation, you isolate yourself. Depression sets in and you’re stuck in a terrible cycle of sadness, anger and isolation. But when you have a dog, you must get out of bed. You’ve got to feed them. You’ve got to walk them.”

Witnessing dogs coax veterans out of isolation was a revelation to Webb, and it set her on a course of personal reinvention from retaliated-against pharmaceutical industry whistleblower to expert on the human-canine bond and its ability to strengthen human resilience — a vital quality for people journeying through the arduous whistleblower process.

Orphans and off-label marketing

By the time Webb started working for Depomed, she’d been a pharmaceutical sales representative for more than two decades. She loved the job. Her first job in 1987 was with F. Hoffmann-LaRoche (aka Roche Labs), where she worked for 17 years. “I loved the people and everything else about it,” she tells Fraud Magazine. “But there were corporate layoffs and downsizing, and I ended up leaving to work for several smaller companies.” Just as the opioid epidemic was starting, many of those small companies were focused on selling pain medication, and many of their marketing practices made Webb uncomfortable. At one of those companies, she observed what she thought were fraudulent marketing practices and reported them to the human resources department. It didn’t go well. “HR supported the company, not me,” she explains to Fraud Magazine. “I left and went to Depomed with the hope that it would be an ethical pharmaceutical company.”

Webb was a seasoned professional by then; she had no illusions about the industry she worked in. “When I’d started working for Depomed, I was 50 years old and no longer naïve about corporate operations.” But she had the experience the drug maker needed, and it hired her to sell one of its new products, extended-release gabapentin.

Gabapentin is an anticonvulsant drug that helps control epileptic seizures, but it has many other uses, including treating pain caused by nerve damage. It’s even prescribed for pain and anxiety in dogs and cats. But gabapentin has a darkside: It can intensify the effects of opioid drugs if taken together and increase the risk of overdose. Depomed’s gabapentin formulation was a once-daily pill meant to treat postherpetic neuralgia, a particularly painful condition people may experience after shingles. Postherpetic neuralgia was the only indication for Depomed’s drug. And, because it’s a rare condition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted it orphan drug status, which gives a medication developed for rare diseases market protection. There aren’t huge markets for rare diseases, so there’s not much opportunity to make a profit. The FDA encourages pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments for rare conditions with incentives like tax credits for clinical trials, exemptions from fees and seven years of market exclusivity after the FDA approves them.

But, according to Webb, Depomed had loftier goals for its orphan drug. Early in her tenure she says she spotted bright-red flags indicating it was aiming for a corner of the rapidly expanding pain-medication market.

“Because generic gabapentin was being used everywhere, it appeared that Depomed planned to consume a portion of an enourmous generic market with its branded once-a-day drug,” Webb explains. “But it’s against the law to sell a drug contrary to the indications described in its package insert.” It seemed like Depomed wanted to sell it "off label," meaning that it was promoting the treatment for uses the FDA hadn’t approved it for.

In her second week on the job, management asked her to invite a doctor known for being a high prescriber of pain medications to attend Depomed’s drug launch. In the pharmaceutical industry, companies hold launch meetings to educate and get sales representatives excited to sell a new product. But with the treatment’s orphan drug designation, Webb thought it was a little strange to have such a big event for something with an extremely small market. “Everything that happened at this launch meeting told me [Depomed] planned to get its foot in the door [of the pain medication market] and expect us representatives to sell it for many different indications.” She didn’t want to be part of that plan. According to Webb, it seemed the company had calculated its sales goals for its representatives with off-label marketing in mind. “When I questioned my manager about how these goals were determined, the story they gave me didn’t add up,” she says. “So, I kept pushing and nudging them to explain how the company determined the sales goals and why they were asking me to sell a drug off label because it’s illegal.”

As Webb prodded Depomed managers for more information about the marketing plan, she learned she was being moved to a different division within the company that was a three-hour drive from her home in Virginia. She was now commuting six hours a day, with a directive to make 12 sales each day, an impossibility with the new schedule she was required to keep. “They were making the job impossible for me to do well,” says Webb.

If you’re at a point where you’re ready to speak out, then you’re already in that tough situation. Go into it with your eyes open and understand what you’re getting into.

Collecting evidence

It was during a sales meeting that Webb learned the truth about her territory switch. A colleague from Webb’s former division told Webb that management transferred her to "teach her a lesson" and "keep her mouth shut.” Incensed, Webb resolved to fight back. “I decided they weren’t going to get away with pushing pain medication into communities. If I could get enough evidence and prove that what they were doing was wrong, I’d take legal action.”

Webb gathered most of her evidence against Depomed while out on sales calls with her boss, who was there to ensure she was complying with the requirements of her job. When he’d get out of the car, Webb would take the opportunity to document everything he said to her and take notes on the sales calls they made that day. She had a notebook in which she’d stockpile her evidence of off-label marketing. She didn’t know if recording her manager was legal, so she wrote everything down by hand.

She collected evidence of Depomed’s marketing and sales plans showing that the company was marketing the orphan drug off label. Later, she learned through a co-relator on the case that the company was selling another opioid drug, Lazanda, off label. Lazanda, was a fentanyl nasal spray developed for cancer patients who were resistant to other pain medications. According to the Department of Justice, Depomed was also targeting high-prescriber doctors with off-label uses for Lazanda.

At this point, Webb had been driving three hours to the sales territory and three hours home again for eight months. She’d received poor performance review after poor performance and then she received one that ordered to receive remedial training. Earlier in her career, Webb had won industry awards for her work as a sales representative. “And now I needed remedial training because I opened my mouth,” says Webb.

She wrote a lengthy response to the reviews, which she then submitted as a resignation letter. Webb says she had all the evidence she needed against Depomed by then. Now all she had to do was find a lawyer who specialized in whistleblower law. She wasn’t sure where to turn for help, but she had a stack of evidence and a story to tell.

A whistleblower case may last a decade

In the U.S., individuals may file suits in U.S. federal courts under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provision, of the FCA. This provision allows people to file whistleblower claims on behalf of the U.S. government. If the case is successfully prosecuted, whistleblowers may be rewarded a percentage of the proceeds for reporting fraud that caused financial loss to the U.S. government. To guide them through the complex process of filing a qui tam suit and meeting strict filing deadlines, whistleblowers are required to have a lawyer. Webb found a lawyer in an unconventional way: She applied for a job.

The job listing, which she found on employment search site, Indeed, was for a pharmaceutical fraud consultant. “Well, I certainly knew what fraud was in the pharmaceutical industry.”

She called the number in the job description and the person she spoke to told her to send a resume. Almost immediately after submitting her resume, she received a call telling her that an attorney was interested in her information and would be contacting her soon. Webb thought she was applying for a job, but she ended up with a whistleblower lawyer instead.

Webb tells Fraud Magazine that whistleblowers don’t always realize how long a case can last. And, as a case wends its way through the courts, whistleblowers are bound to silence until the conclusion of their case. “I didn’t know the process would last more than a decade,” says Webb. “I filed three lawsuits. The first complaint was filed in October 2014. My case wasn’t settled until May 12, 2025.”

A lawyer might tell a whistleblower client their case will only last a few years, but Webb says that depending on the complexity of the case, whistleblowers need to be prepared for a decade-long fight. “A long, drawn out case affects every single aspect of your life, and not just lost wages from being out of work.”

“If you begin a whistleblowing case, you may leave the case at any point, but the lawsuit will continue without you. I had a choice: I could quit or I could put my head down and plow forward. I chose to plow forward.” Webb looked to her faith and examples of courageous people in her personal life to draw strength. “I knew that if these people could withstand tragedies and thrive, then I could too. Their courage was part of my DNA.” 

For her courage to speak up, Webb's the 2026 recipient of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) Sentinel Award, which is bestowed annually on a person who publicly discloses wrongdoing without regard to personal or professional consequences. Webb will accept the award at the 37th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference July 12-17 in Boston, Massachusetts, (and virtual).

A warning sign

Even though things were relatively quiet shortly after she'd filed her first lawsuit against Depomed, Webb says she was frightened. “In the whistleblower stories you always hear about, nothing good ever happens to the whistleblower.”

It seems Webb had good reason to be fearful. Her name was supposed to be kept confidential under an LLC to protect her identity. But that didn’t end up happening, and her name was released publicly. One evening as she drove home from visiting her husband at work, a black SUV ran her small car into the jersey barrier on the highway in Richmond, Virginia. “I’m livid, I’m yelling, I’m cursing. I’m shaken up. I tell my husband what happened, and he says it could’ve just been a bad driver.” But three days later, in the very same spot on the highway, what she thought could be the same black SUV ran her off the road again. “With my name released around the time these two incidents occurred, I took them as warning signs.”

Her lawyer told her it was possible the highway incidents were connected to her case because Depomed had hired a firm known for using dirty tricks against opponents. He then suggested she get a remote car starter. “At first, I told him, I’d love to get one. It’s so cold here in the winter, it’d be great to get the car started and heated before I get into it.” But then Webb realized her lawyer wasn’t talking about her convenience or comfort. “I said, ‘are you talking about explosives on my car?’ He said, ‘well, these things have been known to happen.’”

The possibility that someone might plant an explosive in her car wasn’t what Webb had bargained for when she spoke up against Depomed. “I was just trying to be a good and honest employee,” Webb says. “In the process, my career was taken away from me, and my family was suffering financially. And now every morning, I’m looking underneath my car for explosives before I get into it.”

Despite the fear and uncertainty with her case, she resolved to keep fighting, especially after learning that her son was struggling with an addiction to opioid pain medication. “After I’d been fighting so hard against a pharmaceutical company dumping pain medication into American communities, I felt like such a failure. I felt like I’d failed my child. I felt like I’d failed at being a whistleblower.” Webb knows now she didn’t fail her son, who has since made an extraordinary recovery. When her first case against Depomed was dismissed and her lawyer asked if she wanted to pursue a second one, she answered, “Hell, yes, I’m ready to do this again.”

“Not only was I angry about the previous case, but my family — and so many other families — had been affected [by opioid addiction]. It seemed like every day there were tragic stories in the news of families burying their children because of opioid addiction.” 

But then, something happened that would test her resolve and challenge her ability to keep fighting her case. While one son struggled with addiction, another one died from an undiagnosed illness. “The amount of grief during this decade-long, this whole whistleblowing period of my life, I don’t know how I survived it,” Webb says. “Our son dying is a parent’s worst nightmare. We still struggle with it. But if I can manage that grief and move forward with a purpose to my life, then I’d be OK.” 

Soon enough, Webb would find her purpose in life — a purpose that could help others find their own resolve in difficult times.

What dogs can teach us

There’s a neurochemical reaction that occurs between humans and dogs when they look into each other’s eyes. An exchange of the feel-good hormone, oxytocin, happens called an oxcytocin positive feedback loop. It’s the same chemical reaction that bonds a mother to her baby. 

“If I’m stressed,” says, Webb, “My dog will come to me and alert me to my emotional state. She’ll put her head in my lap and maintain eye contact with me until I acknowledge her. A dog’s superpower is their sense of smell. They smell emotion: fear, sadness, joy, grief.” Dogs, according to Webb, share many of the same emotions as humans, and they reflect their human’s emotional state. And, “In a profound testimony to our biological connectedness is a dog’s ability to synchronize their heart rates to ours.”

Dogs respond to emotionally charged vocal cues, such as crying and laughing, because they have a voice-sensitive region in their brain. “Our dogs are biologically programmed to be one with us. We’re meant to be together. This is a millennia-long bond we share with dogs: neurochemical, biological and behavioral pathways help us connect with each other.” It’s a connection with the power to help heal trauma. 

Webb saw this healing in real time when she volunteered for organizations that trained service dogs for physically and emotionally disabled military veterans. The dogs were trained to help the veterans manage tasks that had become difficult because of their PTSD or other injuries. If a veteran was uncomfortable walking into an empty room, a dog was trained to scan a room first before the veteran walked in. If a veteran’s trauma was triggered by someone walking too closely behind them, the dog learned to alert the veteran to someone walking up behind them. “It was powerful and life changing for the veterans.” It was also a life-changing experience for Webb. 

“I could see the writing on the wall. I’d never go back to the pharmaceutical world,” Webb tells Fraud Magazine. “While my whistleblowing case was going on in the background, I was reinventing myself by training service dogs for veterans.”  

Dogs are trusting where humans aren’t. For someone who’s experienced the trauma of war — or workplace retaliation — betrayal and lack of trust are core issues to be addressed. Rebuilding trust in others is essential to healing.“Because dogs are so honest and true a person who has lost trust in other humans will trust a dog. As time goes on that trust is transferred to people.It’s a process of repairing and rebuilding and gradually incorporating back into society.”  

“Even though I’ve been around dogs my entire life, I’d never seen something like that. I had to know how it worked.” At the age of 60, Webb earned a master’s degree in canine cognition and communication at the Bergin College of Canine Studies. 

Since earning her degree, Webb's founded her own dog training business, Leash of Courage. She educates people on the healing power of a dog following trauma, including moral injury. She’s also a faculty member at Bergin, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate students the science behind the human-canine bond.

What whistleblowers need 

In Webb’s estimation, at each organization, there are people who notice things others might not see or choose to ignore. Webb was one of those employees, and she pointed out inconsistencies in marketing plans, sales goals and training manuals at Depomed. When she questioned managers, starting with her boss and his managers, Webb says she only got vague answers. “I think that if organizations want to avoid whistleblower lawsuits, they need to listen to their high-performing employees instead of dismissing them and retaliating against them. Retaliation sets the stage for litigation.” 

“Management at Depomed could’ve said they’d look into the issue and address it, instead of treating me like the problem. We need to pay attention to the people willing to speak up when no one else will," says Webb. "The person who speaks out and stands alone generally has nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

Speaking of her own whistleblowing experience, Webb tells Fraud Magazine that she can see clearly how her former employer considered her a threat and a liability. “The easiest thing for them was to get rid of me, which was clearly the intention. Even though they tried, I was wise to them and gathered enough evidence for a case against them before I resigned." 

Whistleblowers can’t be stopped

Webb says that writing a book about being a whistleblower was an important experience for her. “To not only write about what happened but understand why I did what I did and why my employers responded to me the way they did was transformative,” she says. “What I didn’t anticipate was that once I started speaking up at work, my colleagues backed away from me. No one supported me; it was as if I were all alone.” 

What would she tell people who are thinking about blowing the whistle on their employer?  Webb says that she’d give them the truth — and a copy of her book, “Leash of Courage,” which publishes on March 20, 2026. “They’d see all the good and bad that comes with whistleblowing,” she says. “There’s a lot more bad than good.”  

For Webb, it’s essential that fellow whistleblowers have a clear mental image of how tough things can get. “If you’re at a point where you’re ready to speak out, then you’re already in a tough situation. Go into it with your eyes open, fully understanding what you’re getting into,” she tells Fraud Magazine. “It’s going to take far longer than you anticipate, and you’ll need a good support system because you may not be able to talk about the case.” 

According to Webb, lawyers must be honest with their clients about how long a whistleblower case might last and the isolation that will result from speaking up.  “You’re going to have to find a way to get through it. You’ll have to find a new purpose, a new profession. You can’t rely on what the government decides to do about your case because the resolution may not be satisfying.” 

If somebody is determined to become a whistleblower, says Webb, they’ll need to move on with their life. Whistleblowers often get stuck “in the belly of corruption,” unable to move forward. “I was determined to right the wrong as best as I could, but I wasn’t going to stay stuck.”

Prospective whistleblowers must imagine what they want their future lives to look like long before their case is resolved. Webb remembers thinking that when her case was resolved, she’d receive enough of a settlement to help rebuild her life. “But that didn’t happen.” Depomed agreed to settle the case for $3.6 million. After paying her lawyer, the co-relator (the term for a whistleblower in a lawsuit) in the case and the U.S. government, there was just enough money left over from the settlement to put a new roof on her house.  

“I get satisfaction from being able to speak openly and tell my story. It’s such a remarkable turnaround from my lowest point, sitting in my office, wondering why I kept going. But I had this deep well of resilience, and I wasn’t going to let this case consume me.”

Jennifer Liebman, CFE, is editor in chief of Fraud Magazine. Contact her at jliebman@ACFE.com.

How fraud fueled an epidemic of opioid addiction

In November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. drug manufacturer Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty by videoconference to its role in another kind of epidemic, an epidemic of drug use that many would soon come to blame on fraudulent marketing practices. The New Jersey-based drugmaker, considered the highest-profile offender of the epidemic, admitted it had marketed and sold opioid products to doctors, even when it knew the doctors were funneling those drugs to people addicted to opioids.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Rachael A. Honig, said, “The company lied to the Drug Enforcement Administration about steps it had taken to prevent such diversion, fraudulently increasing the amount of its products it was permitted to sell. Purdue also paid kickbacks to providers to encourage them to prescribe even more of its products.”

Under terms of its plea agreement with the U.S. government, Purdue agreed to pay one of the largest penalties ever against a drug manufacturer: a criminal fine of $3.5 billion and an additional $2 billion in criminal forfeiture. In 2019, Purdue filed for bankruptcy, crushed under the weight of multiple lawsuits brought by people suffering harm due to opioid overdoses. 

Starting in the late 1990s, the number of people in the U.S. addicted to opioid pain medications — medications that were often prescribed by their doctor and heavily marketed by pharmaceutical manufacturers — increased rapidly. In 2017, the U.S. government declared opioid addiction a public health emergency. The U.S. Department of Justice formed the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit to combat the crisis. 

Opioid drugs are derived from the poppy flower and include illegal and legal drugs and natural and synthetic drugs, including heroin (natural), fentanyl (synthetic) and prescription drugs such as oxycodone. They’re used for managing chronic pain, but they also create feelings of euphoria. They’re also highly addictive. According to the Addiction Center, an estimated 130 people die every day from overdosing on opioids, including prescription pain relievers, synthetic opioids like fentanyl, and heroin. The Addiction Center reports that nearly 80% of heroin users first misused a prescription opioid such as OxyContin — Purdue Pharma’s drug. Between 21% to 29% of patients who receive an opioid prescription for chronic pain misuse them, and between 8% and 12% develop an opioid use disorder.

When Purdue launched its pain medication OxyContin in 1996, its marketing strategy was to sell the drug to all patients with chronic pain and target certain doctors who often prescribe it. It was a winning strategy for Purdue. According to the Addiction Center, by targeting physicians, sales of Purdue’s opioids grew from $48 million in 1996 to nearly $1.1 billion in 2000.

Waves and tactics

According to a 2024 report by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, the opioid epidemic can be broken down into four phases or “waves.” The first wave, beginning in the 1990s, was marked by an increase in opioid prescriptions for chronic pain, which created an opportunity for people to become addicted. The second wave occurred between 2010 and 2013, with increases in heroin overdose deaths. Northwestern University says this increase in heroin overdoses may have been due to efforts to decrease prescription-related overdoses. When people were no longer able to get prescriptions, they turned to illegal alternatives. The third wave of the epidemic began in 2013. In this phase, there was an increase in overdose deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Fentanyl is a potent drug often used for surgical procedures; however, during the 2013 wave, people were largely accessing and overdosing on illegal forms of fentanyl. 

We’re currently in the fourth phase of the epidemic. In this wave, people are using multiple substances, namely combinations of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl. According to Northwestern, this wave of the opioid epidemic has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic when overdoses increased. 

The New England Journal of Medicine reported in 2017 on the main strategies employed by the U.S. government to stem the epidemic. These strategies leverage laws like the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which prohibits selling “misbranded” drugs. Another strategy employed by the U.S. government has been to accuse drug companies of deceptive business practices, making false representations about their products’ effectiveness or addictiveness.