Investigation reveals that senior CFTC officials who flagged concerns about Polymarket, Crypto.com, and Gemini were suspended, investigated, and pressured to leave the agency, even after raising valid concerns about regulatory compliance.
A New York Times investigation found that senior CFTC officials who raised concerns about Polymarket, Crypto.com and Gemini were suspended and pushed out. Senior officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who raised concerns about prediction market companies were suspended, investigated and eventually pushed out of the agency.
Sunday, the officials had flagged concerns about Polymarket, Crypto.com and a Gemini affiliate, each with alleged business ties to the Trump family. Career staff worried that Crypto.com was not treating small bettors fairly, that Polymarket lacked adequate fraud protections and that Gemini’s affiliate had not completed the required regulatory review to operate. Despite those concerns, then-acting CFTC chair Caroline Pham and her senior counsel intervened to help the firms get what they wanted, sources told the NYT.
By the end of 2025, two officials who had raised questions were placed on administrative leave and under internal investigation. Three others who had enforced crypto laws faced the same fate. None were told what they had done wrong.
“But current and former agency staffers said in interviews that the commission’s work force took away a clear message: Don’t cause trouble for those industries,” the report wrote. CFTC pulls back on crypto enforcement The report noted that the CFTC has significantly pulled back on crypto enforcement. The agency dropped at least five crypto investigations and went from filing more than 80 crypto enforcement actions under Biden to just two under Trump.
Both of the recent cases targeted individual operators, not major firms. Pham left the agency to join MoonPay, a crypto firm partnered with Polymarket. Her senior counsel, Brigitte Weyls, became general counsel at Gemini Titan, the same company whose application she helped approve, the NYT claimed. Current chair Michael Selig, the agency’s sole commissioner, previously represented crypto firms as a corporate lawyer.
Crypto.com is a business partner of Trump Media. Polymarket received investment from Donald Trump Jr-backed venture capital firm 1789 Capital. Gemini’s founders are financial backers of American Bitcoin Corp, a crypto firm co-founded by Eric Trump.
“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, told the outlet. “There are no conflicts of interest. ” Cointelegraph reached out to Polymarket, Crypto.com and Gemini for comment, but had not received a response by publication. As Cointelegraph reported, the CFTC has filed lawsuits against over their legal proceedings
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