Photo of Sydney Sznajder

Sydney Sznajder

Sydney focuses on white collar defense, internal investigations, and compliance work. Sydney’s path to working as a white collar attorney began as a corporate editor at a risk investigative consultancy, where she edited risk reports and summaries of internal investigations for high-profile businesses. She enjoyed helping researchers communicate complex legal and commercial challenges and developed an interest in understanding the law and its relationship to the corporate world.

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In April 2026, U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke was charged for allegedly profiting over $400,000 on bets placed on an offshore cryptocurrency-based prediction platform using classified information related to a military operation targeting former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The prosecution of Van Dyke reflected the government’s position that prediction markets are subject to the Commodity Exchange Act’s (CEA) anti-fraud and insider trading prohibitions.

Less than six weeks later, federal prosecutors have filed a second insider trading claim involving prediction markets–this time alleging use of confidential corporate data on Polymarket, the world’s largest online prediction marketplace.

White-Collar

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently provided important information about how it plans to handle the surge in data-driven False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam lawsuits. On April 30, 2026, DOJ announced its Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics (FOCUS) Initiative, a new program designed to help the government assess viable data-driven qui tams. This initiative offers important insights into the DOJ’s evolving approach to these cases and potential new avenues for early dismissal.

Closeup financial chart with uptrend line candlestick graph in s

The prediction market industry has spent the better part of two years arguing that event contracts are a legitimate, regulated, and economically valuable financial product—and, in important respects, that argument has prevailed. What the industry could not have anticipated is that its first landmark enforcement action involves not a rogue trader on Wall Street but an active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant accused of leveraging classified intelligence about a covert military operation to pocket more than $400,000 on an offshore cryptocurrency-based prediction platform.

The Supreme Court recently and unanimously held in Ellingburg v. United States[1] that restitution imposed under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 (MVRA) qualifies as “criminal punishment” subject to the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause. While this narrow ruling only prohibits restitution judgments for convictions that predate the MVRA, Justice Clarence Thomas authored a concurrence advocating for a more expansive view of the Ex Post Facto Clause that reaches nominally civil as well as criminal laws.

On October 2, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas stayed Commodity Futures Trading Commission, et al. v. TMTE Inc., et al., a case with potentially consequential implications for the commodities and derivatives markets. As we discussed in our prior update, this $185 million fraud suit was filed against two California precious metals dealers by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and 30 state regulators. In July, the Court denied summary judgment to both parties. The most significant holding from that order was the finding that gold and silver are not commodities under Section 1 of the CFTC’s enacting statute, the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA).

Washington, D.C., USA- January13, 2020: Sign of The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) at its headquarters in Washington, an agency of the US government.

Within the Government Enforcement, Compliance & Investigations Report, we plan to bring you periodic updates from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In this first one, we are excited to announce a new addition to our team (and co-author of this post)—Jeff Le Riche. Jeff joins us after 20 years with the CFTC. We are thrilled to have him on board.

Now on to our updates from the CFTC.

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On August 29, 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a new Trade Fraud Task Force, which will leverage resources from DOJ’s Civil and Criminal Divisions as well as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to enforce tariff and duties evasion, smuggling, and other import violations. The initiative furthers the Trump Administration’s “America First Trade Policy” announced on Inauguration Day and in Executive Order 14243, which promotes information-sharing between agencies to support the administration’s overall goals of combating waste, fraud, and abuse.

Washington, D.C., USA- January13, 2020: Sign of The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) at its headquarters in Washington, an agency of the US government.

On August 1, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Acting Chairman Caroline D. Pham announced a “crypto sprint” aimed at actualizing recommendations from a recent report published by President Donald Trump’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets. The initiative serves as Acting Chairman Pham’s first steps toward reshaping digital assets regulation in compliance with the administration’s earlier policy memorandum instructing agencies to pull back on prosecutions in the digital assets space.