By Chris Prentice and Susan Heavey
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Monday that former prosecutor David Miller will become its top enforcement official, as the agency prepares to take on greater oversight of cryptocurrency and prediction markets.
David Miller, who was most recently at law firm Greenberg Traurig, has joined the CFTC as its top enforcement official, the agency said on Monday. The move brings an experienced trial lawyer and a former prosecutor from the securities and commodities fraud task force at the U.S. prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, known for bringing ambitious and complex cases.
The new Chairman Michael Selig has begun adding staff since joining the agency in late December. The CFTC has been hollowed out during President Donald Trump’s administration. Selig is the lone political appointee on a typically bipartisan, five-person commission. Numerous career staff have left the regulator over the last year amid a purge of federal workers under the Trump administration.
“Under Chairman Selig’s leadership, I look forward to working closely with the talented Commission staff to advance the chairman’s mission of fostering innovation and protecting the integrity of U.S. markets, including from fraud, abuse, and manipulation,” Miller said in a statement.
In private practice, Miller has defended individuals in high-profile digital asset cases brought by the U.S. in recent years, including representing a manager at a nonfungible token (NFT) platform accused of wire fraud and money laundering and a former product manager at crypto firm Coinbase accused of insider trading.
Miller was previously a terrorism prosecutor and was also a technical advisor for the television show “Billions.”
(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Chris Prentice in New York; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Andrea Ricci)
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