CFTC v. Christy, Crabapple Capital Group (ponzi schemes, 2013)

Settled

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In January 2013 the CFTC filed a notice of intent to revoke the registrations of Robert A. Christy and Crabapple Capital Group LLC, relying on an earlier Georgia federal consent order that held them liable for fraud in a Ponzi scheme. That order required about $1.1 million in restitution and a $1.54 million civil penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.5m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$1.5m

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

This release is a registration action, not a new complaint. The CFTC says the two are statutorily disqualified because of a consent order for permanent injunction entered in the Northern District of Georgia on October 16, 2012. That order found that they misappropriated over $1 million of pool funds, solicited pool participants fraudulently and made false statements, and held them liable for fraud in running a Ponzi scheme.

The consent order, as described in the release, requires $1,099,598 in restitution and a civil monetary penalty of $1,541,882, which is the penalty recorded here.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes payments to earlier participants made from later participants' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Ponzi schemes — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2013-01-28 CFTC release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• CFTC release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.