The U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are probing more than $2.6 billion in suspiciously timed oil trades placed before major Iran war announcements, ABC News reported, citing sources.
The inquiry covers at least four trades in which traders bet that oil prices would fall shortly before market-moving announcements by President Donald Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The DOJ and CFTC have not publicly commented on the trades, and the available data does not identify the traders behind them or prove that anyone acted on inside information.
The timing is still drawing intense scrutiny because each trade landed just before oil moved sharply lower. ABC said it obtained the four-trade dataset from the London Stock Exchange Group.
The first trade came on March 23, about 15 minutes before Trump announced that he would delay threatened attacks on Iran’s power grid. Traders placed more than $500 million in bets that oil would fall.
The second came on April 7, hours before Trump announced a temporary ceasefire with Iran. Traders placed about $960 million in bearish oil bets before prices dropped.
A third trade came on April 17, roughly 20 minutes before Araghchi posted that the Strait of Hormuz was open. Traders placed about $760 million in bets on falling oil prices, and crude fell as much as 11% within minutes, according to a later request from Rep. Ritchie Torres asking the CFTC to expand its review.
The fourth came on April 21, about 15 minutes before Trump announced an extension of the ceasefire. Traders placed a series of bearish oil bets worth about $430 million.
The latest DOJ-linked report follows earlier pressure from lawmakers. On April 10, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse asked CFTC Chair Michael Selig to investigate unusual oil futures trading before Trump administration announcements tied to the Iran conflict.
Their letter said several well-timed trades appeared to anticipate major administration decisions before they became public. The senators warned that the pattern raised questions about possible misappropriation of material nonpublic government information.
Reuters also reported in April that the CFTC was examining oil futures trades on CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange platforms. CFTC Chair Michael Selig later warned in prepared remarks that anyone engaging in “fraud, manipulation, or insider trading” in CFTC-regulated markets would face enforcement action, though his remarks did not confirm any specific case.
The oil probe is not a crypto case, but it lands in the same broader market-integrity debate now spreading across equities, commodities, prediction markets, and digital assets. A recent law-firm insider trading case showed how prosecutors are targeting alleged misuse of confidential information across traditional markets, while crypto enforcement has already applied similar theories to token listings and event-market activity.
War-sensitive commodity markets raise an even sharper version of the same problem. Oil prices can move violently on ceasefire talks, strike delays, port access, Strait of Hormuz updates, and military escalation risk. A trader with advance knowledge of those announcements could profit quickly through futures or options before the rest of the market sees the information.
The investigation is still at an early stage, and no trader has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in the latest $2.6 billion dataset. The trades now under review sit at the intersection of government information, commodity-market liquidity, and geopolitical risk. If investigators find evidence that nonpublic war-related information moved into oil markets before official announcements, the case would become one of the clearest tests of how U.S. regulators police trading around state-sensitive decisions.
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