On November 1, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Whistleblower Office released its 2022 Annual Report on the CFTC Whistleblower Program. The report details the program’s record 2022 Fiscal Year, which included the largest whistleblower award ever issued under the Dodd-Frank Act.

“The CFTC whistleblower award program is often overlooked but it covers a wide range of financial fraud and has recently racked up some impressive successes,” said whistleblower attorney David Colapinto of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto.

“Thanks to whistleblowers the CFTC has ordered more than $3 billion in sanctions against fraudsters in all whistleblower-related enforcement actions,” Colapinto continued. “All of the money that is collected as sanctions is returned to taxpayers and harmed investors.”

The report notes that “the CFTC’s Whistleblower Program made history” when it issued a $200 million whistleblower award on October 21, 2021. To date, this is the largest ever whistleblower award issued under the Dodd-Frank Act, the law which established the whistleblower programs at the CFTC and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The report also details the nine other whistleblower awards issued by the program during the 2022 Fiscal Year. These include a $10 million award issued on March 18, 2022 to a whistleblower who “whistleblower gave useful information at the earliest stages of the [CFTC’s] investigation and later provided supplemental information.”

The report also notes that the program received 1,506 whistleblower tips during the 2022 Fiscal Year, a more than 50% increase over the previous fiscal year. According to the report, “the majority of tips received during the Period involved fraudulent misappropriation and fraudulent solicitation involving crypto/digital assets.” Other types of fraud disclosed in whistleblower tips include “record keeping or registration violations, illegal swap dealer business conduct, solicitation, misappropriation, insider trading and … spoofing.”

Geoff Schweller also contributed to this article.