Procurement Opportunities

The Procurement Office (i.e., “Procurement Section”) resides within the Business Operations Branch of the Division of Administration and is charged with managing the Commission’s acquisition needs and overseeing and executing all CFTC procurement activities. The Procurement Office is also responsible for drafting and implementing procurement policy for the Commission and awarding and administering the Commission's contracts according to sound business practices, federal laws and regulations, and agency policies.

CFTC purchases both equipment and services. To achieve this the Commission uses various types of contract vehicles outlined in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) including:

• Orders Against Other Government Contracts (e.g., GSA Federal Supply Schedules, NASA SEWP and other Government wide Acquisition Contracts)
• Purchase Orders (open market)
• Commercial Contracts
• Agreements (e.g., Blanket Purchase Agreements, Blanket Ordering Agreements and Interagency Agreements)
• Major Contracts (e.g., Firm-Fixed Price, Time-and-Materials and Labor Hour)

Notices for small purchase procurement actions ($15,001 - $25,000) procured on an open market non-competitive or competitive basis are located in the table below. (Note: In the event that the Commission does not have active small purchases, the table below will be empty.)

The CFTC’s open market acquisitions exceeding $25,000 are published under Contract Opportunities at SAM.gov | Contract Opportunities.  However, the majority of the CFTC’s purchasing activity is through U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedules (FSS) and via the government purchase card program. These requirements are not normally published on the Internet. Your company may be considered for these awards if it has a GSA FSS contract or has otherwise effectively marketed its products and/or services to CFTC.

Verify Your Sources

As a current or prospective vendor to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) you have an important role to support our mission to promote the integrity, resilience, and vibrancy of the U.S. derivatives markets through sound regulation. CFTC procures a diverse selection of products and services from our vendors using methods consistent with the Federal Acquisition Regulation and related laws and directives.

Unfortunately, cybercriminals have recently targeted those doing business with or seeking to do business with CFTC through fake email-based solicitations purporting to be from CFTC officials. We are asking for your help in ensuring the integrity of our procurement process, and are providing you the details of this scheme to help you protect your company against fraudulent solicitations.

The Scheme

Companies doing business with the government or seeking to do so are sent an unsolicited email that appears to come from a CFTC email address, with the name of a real CFTC employee on an attached Request for Quotation (RFQ). The RFQ is generally an official-looking Adobe PDF document asking for a quote to purchase a large quantity of computer equipment, frequently laptops, cell phones, printers, and other high-end devices. The email will be coming from a “.com”, “.net”, or “.org” address (e.g., CISAgov.com) and not a government email address (.gov) and will generally request a rapid response with your “bid”. The RFQ will contain the real address of a CFTC office, but a fake phone number that goes directly to the cybercriminals. If you call the number, they will answer in an effort to prove and show you a LinkedIn page or press release with the name of the spoofed government employee to prove the legitimacy of their email. In addition, they will encourage you to act quickly. If you respond with a quote, you will be provided with a fake purchase order directing you to ship the equipment to a special “CFTC Warehouse” or similar facility that is actually either a public storage facility or a personal home. Once the equipment is shipped, the criminals quickly collect it and re-ship it, leaving you with no contract and no equipment, which can have a devastating impact on your operations.

What You Can Do

All CFTC procurements follow the Federal Acquisition Regulation and have certain characteristics:

1. The procurement opportunities are generally posted on government sites such as SAM.gov, NASA SEWP or GSA. CFTC personnel may send you via email an invitation to submit an RFQ, request information on your products or services, obtain estimates, or perform market research activities, but it will always come from a government email address “.gov”. When you receive such an email, always highlight the email address with your mouse and you will see the mailto: will always be to a .gov email address. 
2. CFTC personnel will not contact you from a non-government email address. All email communications from CFTC will come from a “.gov” email address. While fraudsters may put a .gov email address in the name displayed (e.g., Jane Doe [[email protected]]), if you highlight the email address with your mouse you will see the mailto: will actually be to a .com, .net., .org, .us, or similar address. 
3. CFTC awards have verifiable delivery addresses. The current cyberscams have deliveries being sent to public storage facilities and/or residential addresses. CFTC will only receive procured items at a government location – not a residence or a storage facility. You can verify the shipment location with public records and a basic Google maps check to ensure the facility shown is consistent with the relevant CFTC operations.
4. Verification should be through official CFTC point of contact. Many of the scammers point individuals to the LinkedIn pages of real government personnel (or articles covering them) to show the name matches that on the purchase order. Unfortunately, the fraudsters frequently impersonate real, public facing CFTC personnel. Pointing you to an official press release with the name may confirm that the person is a CFTC employee, but it does nothing to confirm that the sender of the email is actually that person. Scammers may also provide a contact phone number (or spoof a CFTC phone number) to call to verify the solicitation. If you want to verify a solicitation, please reach out to [email protected].

There are several steps you can take to protect yourself and your company from these fraudsters, confirm the authenticity of any solicitations, and help us identify and stop these criminals. If you receive any communication that you believe to be fraudulent, do not respond and please report it immediately to the CFTC Office of the Inspector General (https://www.cftc.gov/About/OfficeoftheInspectorGeneral/reportmisconduct).
We take attempts to defraud our vendors seriously and appreciate your help in making us aware of any such attempts when they occur. Thank you for being a valued member of the CFTC community.

Procurement Forecast

CFTC’s FY 2024 Forecast of Contract Opportunities includes projections of procurements with values exceeding $100,000 and that are expected to be initiated in FY 2024.  Through publication of this forecast, CFTC aims to promote equity in its contracting program, to the maximum extent possible, for the small business concerns identified in FAR 19.000(a)(3). [i.e., small business, 8(a) participants, HUBZone small business concerns, service-disabled veteran-owned small business concerns, and economically disadvantaged women-owned small business (EDWOSB) concerns and women-owned small business (WOSB) concerns eligible under the WOSB Program]. The Forecast of Contract Opportunities is updated annually, in the first quarter of the fiscal year.

If no opportunities are listed in the table above and you would like to discuss your firm’s ability to provide products and/or services or otherwise promote your firm’s capabilities, please contact us by email at [email protected].