The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) has issued another reward to a whistleblower for their cooperation. Said individual provided a crucial tip in the form of credible and timely information, which resulted in an investigation by the Commission, which in turn resulted in penalties for the offending parties. What is more, the provided documents helped detect the harm done to users. The Division of Enforcement Director issued a statement: “The violations would have been difficult to detect without the whistleblower’s information and assistance”. The whistleblower’s identity is being kept a secret as per CTFC’s policy. Since 2014 the CTFC has issued $120 million as rewards for whistleblowers. That is a huge sum of money for only six years, one has to wonder what is the size of the scams stopped or prevented. I am assuming it's several times larger.
This type of "bounty" is better than any army of government employee examiners or auditors. You have to wonder if this program could have found out Bernie Madoff.
That is a great question that I asked myself before I posted above. A quick Google search showed no whistleblower press from the CFTC prior to 2014.
The thing about Madoff was that he only had a couple people privy to his crimes, and they were complicit.
SEC issued another whistleblower reward - they recently handed out around $9.2 million to an undisclosed whistleblower, as the individual in question aided the agency in busting a major financial scam. The official announcement by SEC was released this Tuesday, and the US regulator confirmed that the victims of the scam have been reimbursed.