The SEC's whistleblower office, mandated by Dodd-Frank, has gotten a considerable amount of press here and elsewhere. Not as well known, however, is the fact that Dodd-Frank also required the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to create a whistleblower office, and that office got on its feet today with the announcement that the CFTC has hired its first director.

The CFTC announced today that Vincente Martinez will serve as the first director of its recently opened Whistleblower Office. Martinez joins the CFTC from the SEC, where he served as an Assistant Director in the Enforcement Division and helped to establish and run the SEC's Office of Market Intelligence. OIM handles the collection and analysis of tips, complaints and referrals from the public, government agencies and self-regulatory organizations.

Like Section 922 of Dodd-Frank which creates awards for whistleblowers who provide "original information" to the SEC leading to recoveries, Section 748 of Dodd-Frank also provides for whistleblower awards of 10 to 30 percent of the collected monetary sanctions in CFTC matters if such sanctions exceed $1 million. 

In a statement today, CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said the CFTC "need[s] help in catching bad actors in these markets and our new whistleblower efforts will be invaluable to that effort. We have seen a marked uptick in all sorts of financial scams in the last year, so anything and everything we can put in our arsenal to get the crooks is needed."