JPMorgan Chase paid a whopping $13 billion to the U.S. government last year to settle charges the financial institution had overstated the quality of mortgages it sold to investors in the run-up to the financial crisis.
It was the largest settlement ever between the Department of Justice and a corporation. To whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann, though, the settlement was a major disappointment for a few reasons.
"I think the difficulty is the country has been told that this was all an accident or there's no evidence to go forward on this," Fleischmann told CNBC on Wednesday. "There is a mountain of evidence. There are emails. There are reports. There are external reports. There's testimony from other employees."
"So I think the concern is when this can happen and it can get written off as just 'we didn't know what we were doing,' then you can see this happening again," she said on "Squawk Alley."
The real sticking point, though, is that one year after the settlement, the Department of Justice has not brought forth any criminal charges linked to mortgage matters or otherwise, she said.
"How is it possible that you can have this much fraud and not a single person has done anything criminal."
Fleischmann is credited with providing evidence that helped result in JPMorgan's $13 billion settlement. In 2006, she joined the firm as a deal manager. A few months later, she felt uneasy when a new diligence manager came to JPM with "no email" policy.
Then, roughly half of the loans in a multimillion-loan pool had overstated incomes, Fleischmann said. A manicurist, for example, claimed to make a six-figure salary, she recalled. She knew these kinds of loans would probably be at risk for default, putting the investors who bought these securities into jeopardy.
Fleischmann reported these issues up her management chain and wrote a letter, the DOJ eventually used as evidence.
JPMorgan has declined to comment to CNBC, citing its confidentiality agreement over the settlement.
—Reuters contributed to this report