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NEW YORK - A whistle-blower will be paid $63.9 million for providing tips that led to JPMorgan Chase & Co's agreement to pay $614 million and tighten oversight to resolve charges that it defrauded the government into insuring flawed home loans.

The payment to the whistle-blower, Keith Edwards, was disclosed on Friday in a filing with the U.S. district court in Manhattan that formally ended the case.

In the Feb. 4 settlement, JPMorgan admitted that for more than a decade it submitted thousands of mortgages for insurance by the Federal Housing Administration or the Department of Veterans Affairs that did not qualify for government guarantees.

JPMorgan said it had failed to tell the agencies that its own internal reviews had turned up problems.

The government said it ultimately had to cover millions of dollars of losses when some of the bank's loans went sour, resulting in evictions and foreclosures nationwide.

"There were a lot of bad loans made during the financial boom, and the United States taxpayer was left holding the bag through the VA and FHA loan programs," said Edwards' lawyer, David Wasinger. "Hopefully the settlement sends a message to Wall Street that this conduct is not allowed, and that in the future it will be held accountable."

Edwards could not immediately be reached for comment.

About $56.5 million of Edwards' award concerns the FHA portion of the case, and $7.4 million concerns the VA portion. Wasinger declined to discuss his legal fees.

Edwards, a Louisiana resident, had worked for JPMorgan or its predecessors from 2003 to 2008, and had been an assistant vice president supervising a government insuring unit.

He originally sued in January 2013 under the federal False Claims Act, which lets individuals sue government contractors and suppliers for allegedly defrauding taxpayers. The Department of Justice later joined as a plaintiff.

Whistle-blowers can recover portions of False Claims Act settlements, which often grow if the government gets involved.

Since last fall, when Target and Neiman Marcus reported unauthorized access to payment-card data, the potential of identity theft has been consumers' minds. Thieves steal personal information, such as your name and address, Social Security number and date of birth, to commit fraud - for example, getting a loan in your name. The first line of attack is getting informed. The best source for information on how to protect yourself is the Federal Trade Commission, a federal agency whose mission is consumer protection and law enforcement. The FTC website at http://tinyurl.com/blbmymb provides a series of steps for those whose identity has been compromised, as well as preventive measures you can take to protect yourself. Next, contact one of the three national credit-reporting companies: Equifax (http://www.equifax.com, 800-525-6285); Experian (http://http://www.experian.com, 888-397-3742); or TransUnion (http://http://www.transunion.com , 800-680-7289). If your identity has been stolen, you'll want to place an "initial fraud alert" on your credit file to help prevent new accounts being opened in your name, according to Cliff O'Neal, spokesperson for TransUnion.

LANCASTER - Local law enforcement officials say identity theft is a nightmare that can ruin its victims' lives. Unfortunately for Maryanne Sicat, of Lancaster, she is living that nightmare. "For the last three years, I've been trying to clean up my credit and fix my finances and rebuild financially because I had my identity taken and used at several places," she said. Sicat has received bills from stores and utility companies for goods and services she did not purchase. Also, she was buying a television in 2013 at a big-box store and her telephone number came up under the name of a California man. "One time is OK," Sicat said. "The second store makes you wonder. But then every single store that I went to Christmas shopping, it was the same thing. So that's why I started checking into it more." She has the name of the person she thinks is using her information but has no idea how the person got her phone number. So Sicat filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and the Lancaster Police Department, and she has become another identity fraud statistic. The FTC said identity fraud is the top complaint it has dealt with in the past 13 years. It received 369,132 such complaints in 2012, or 18 percent of its total complaints. Identity fraud dwarfed complaints about debt collectors, which was in second place with 199,721, according to information the FTC provided. Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said there have not been a large number of identity fraud and identity theft cases locally. However, that is little consolation to Sicat and others like her. "Everything's on credit," she said. "So you can't do anything. You can't buy anything. It's embarrassing, and it's extremely frustrating because it makes me paranoid. I don't trust anybody." What is identity fraud? Detective James Nicolia, of the Fairfield County Sheriff's Office, said identity fraud is when a person uses another's identity for financial gain o