CFTC v. Schmickle, Q Wealth Management (ponzi schemes, 2013)

Settled

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In April 2013 the CFTC announced a consent order from the Eastern District of Wisconsin against Eric N. Schmickle and Q Wealth Management Inc. over a commodity futures Ponzi scheme, requiring about $3.6 million in restitution and a $1.5 million joint civil penalty. Schmickle was sentenced to 36 months in a parallel criminal case.

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

The consent order, entered April 19, 2013, finds that from May 2009 to about April 2012 Schmickle ran a fraudulent scheme through Q Wealth Management and a pool operator, Aquinas SF LLC, took about $5.2 million from eleven clients, lost over $2.9 million in trading and fees, misappropriated about $647,000, and issued fake statements. It bans both defendants from trading and registration.

He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and received 36 months. The headline figure of over $5 million is restitution plus penalty; the penalty is $1.5 million.

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. 2013-04-23 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 10, 2026. submit a correction.