Caroline Pham is a Republican commissioner at the little-known Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It regulates derivatives and will, in the future, be tasked to regulate cryptocurrency.
In 2023, Commissioner Pham was the canary in the coal mine as to what seems to have been overzealous and controlling attorneys for the agency. They ran roughshod over a Canadian firm called Traders Global Inc., and it cost the agency 3.2 million dollars. The commission's attorneys claimed that Traders Global had committed fraud by wiring money from the Cayman Islands to Canada. In fact, the wires were for tax payments to the Canadian government. When confronted, Traders Global produced evidence that it was paying taxes. Canada also provided receipts to the CFTC. Pham confronted the trial attorney in charge of the case about Pham's misgivings and warned the rest of the commissioners that the agency didn’t have a "gun to our heads” and that it should slow walk any complaint. Pham (an attorney) urged the CFTC not to file suit.
The commission voted to file suit anyway. Someone (almost certainly in the in-house attorney's office) felt vindicated and complained to Human Resources. Pham had been a meanie to the attorneys. The head of HR claimed that Pham had dressed down and “harassed” the lead attorney and had made the lead attorney sad for pointing out that garbage work product was garbage. According to HR, Pham had used confrontational language in the process.
In November 2023, those same attorneys filed a federal complaint loaded with typos, factual errors, and falsified statements. Exculpatory evidence, apparently already known to the staff attorneys, was memory-holed. Pham’s warnings were ignored. Within six months, the case was over. A defense motion for sanctions was granted, and the commission was sanctioned $3.2 million.
The Free Beacon reported on the fiasco: The special master assigned to the case didn't hold back.
[He] excoriated the CFTC in May [2024] after evidence emerged that the agency’s attorneys tried to hide exculpatory evidence, saying CFTC lawyers took "deliberate steps down a path of obfuscation and avoidance."
While the CFTC attorneys were getting tarred and feathered in court, a third-party law firm produced an independent report which informed the CFTC general counsel that, number one, a commissioner is not an “employee” subject to HR policies, because they are presidentially appointed officers, and thus “anti-harassment” policies do not apply to them. And, number two, what Pham said to the lead trial attorney may have subjectively hurt the female lead attorney's feelings, but what she said was not “objective” harassment. Pointing out that an attorney’s work product was subpar is not "harassment," in any event. My reading of the report was "Put your big girl pants on."
After Trump’s election, Pham was appointed to be the Acting Chairwoman of CFTC. In one of her first acts as head of the commission, in February 2025, Pham fired the head of HR and terminated other employees, including attorneys. More firings seem to be justified and on the horizon. One particular guy named Malcom Alexander-Neal seems to be a prime candidate to be pushed to the curb.
As we know, part of Trump’s mission was to force federal employees to return to the office. Of course, there was massive pushback from Democrats and gnashing of teeth by employees and unions. They were used to doing their “work” from their bedrooms or backyard pools while sipping chai tea, but Alexander-Neal seemed to have richly earned the label of chief grifter at CFTC.
A CFTC Inspector General’s report was produced to the Senate, and Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has responded. Alexander-Neal has gamed the system and spent years in Mexico and other countries, including Lebanon, while claiming he was in Chicago. He got caught because he self-published a book called “Verses of Life, Chapters of Love.”
The IG report noted that Alexander-Neal used a VPN to "'work and live' in Mexico while employed by the CFTC. His account details specific boroughs, neighborhoods, and streets in Mexico City where he resided.”
Fellow CFTC employees read his book, noted that he wrote he was living in Mexico, and turned him in. He then removed the out-of-country mentions from his Kindle version, but it was too late.
How did Alexander-Neal find the time to write his book? Easy.
Alexander-Neal barely worked while abroad. For instance, he only worked a total of 575 of the 1,419 hours of official time he certified during one 148-workday period. The inspector general found that he “fraudulently certified” his timesheet and was paid for 1,419 hours during this period.
Senator Grassley’s letter to Chairman Pham says in part:
The report highlights substantial waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct committed by CFTC Risk Analyst, Malcolm Alexander-Neal, including fraudulently certifying government records, such as time and attendance reports; defrauding taxpayers; lying under oath to the CFTC OIG; subjecting government and CFTC regulated entities’ data to potential national security threats and compromise; and violating the Hatch Act.3 These substantiated allegations require immediate corrective action.
Alexander-Neal has been on administrative leave since December 2024.
Commissioner Pham has demonstrated a history of chopping the legs off of bad actors (aka bad employees), and Alexander-Neal seems to be an easy target. The IG’s report is four months old. Senator Grassley's open letter to Commissioner Pham is two days old.
If Pham drops the likely hammer on Alexander-Neal, it may have to be done remotely. Although Alexander-Neal was ordered to stay within an hour of Chicago, the IG report states that he spent most of his time between March 2022 and February 2025 in Mexico. Whether he's sipping a Daiquiri or a Margarita isn't known.
Guaranteed, there are more “Alexander-Neals” in the federal bureaucracy. They are burrowed in like ticks, and many are protected by unions. At least at CFTC, there is Chairwoman Pham willing to boot them to the curb. Unfortunately, those “others” might be harder to find — unless they write books allocuting to their fraud.
Grifting away in Margaritaville.
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