CFTC v. unnamed respondents (ponzi schemes, 2013)

Settled

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In February 2013 the CFTC announced a consent order from a Texas federal court against Rodney and Roger Wagner and their company GID Group over a forex Ponzi scheme that took at least $5.5 million from about 99 customers. The order requires about $1.37 million in restitution and a civil monetary penalty of about $1.05 million.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.1m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$1.1m

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

The CFTC sued in November 2011. The order, entered in the Northern District of Texas, finds that the brothers solicited at least $5.5 million from about 99 customers by claiming six percent daily returns, moved only $590,000 into personal trading accounts, lost money every month, spent most of the money on themselves and on payments to other participants, and sent false account statements. It permanently bans them from trading and registration.

The headline of the release says the defendants must pay "over $2.4 million", which is restitution of about $1.37 million plus the penalty. The record had entered the total as the penalty; the penalty itself is about $1.05 million.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the order or release 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. 2013-02-06 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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 20, 2026. submit a correction.