Bloomberg reported that a former CitiMortgage vice president won a $31 million reward out of a $158.3 million settlement paid by Citigroup to the U.S. Government for violating U.S. mortgage regulations.

The whistleblower, Sherry Hunt, who worked at quality control at Citi’s mortgage unit for eight years, routinely filed reports on flawed mortgages to her bosses before suing the bank.

Bloomberg noted that Hunt’s team of 65 mortgage underwriters was responsible for protecting Citigroup from fraud and bad investments. Instead, Bloomberg said, the bank was buying mortgages from outside lenders with doctored tax forms, phony appraisals and missing signatures, she said. It was Hunt’s job to identify these defects, and she did, in regular reports to her bosses. Executives buried her findings, Hunt said, before, during and after the financial crisis, and even into 2012.

To read the full Bloomberg story click here.