The move David Danon made six years ago for a life of less stress hasn’t panned out at all for him; the now-famous whistleblower of an alleged tax evasion scheme at Vanguard Group is unemployed and on the brink of unemployable while he waits on the fate of his 40-page lawsuit against the mutual fund giant in Malvern.

And the stress isn’t a recent development, either. Danon admitted discovering tax inconsistencies as early as his first year with Vanguard in 2008, according to an interview with InvestmentNews, and the turmoil eventually boiled over into a 2012 black-mark evaluation: “You invested heavily this year in researching technical issues and lightly in helping clients and colleagues achieve practical results.”

It all stems from a vast difference in interpretation of Vanguard’s unique at-cost philosophy.

To the company, “We can do this because we’re the only company in the industry that’s client owned,” the article stated. “We’re owned by our funds and our funds are owned by the people who invest in them, people like you. We don’t generate profits for private owners or stockholders. We return profits to you as cost savings.”

But to Danon, “The only purpose of ‘at-cost’ prices is to avoid federal and state income taxes.”

Read more about the man behind the monumental Vanguard lawsuit in InvestmentNews here, and check out previous Chesco Business Today coverage of the lawsuit here, its implications here, and the key evidence in question here.