CFTC v. Martin, Martin, Queen Shoals Consultants (2014)

Judgment entered

Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In March 2014 the CFTC announced a supplemental consent order in the Western District of North Carolina requiring Gary D. Martin, Brenda K. Martin and Queen Shoals Consultants, LLC to pay $5.76 million in civil penalties for a retail forex fraud in which they passed customer money to a third party.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	CFTC
Release number	6900-14
Date filed	2014-03-31
Date resolved	2014-03-31
Court	U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina
Status	judgment
Criminal parallel	Yes: sentenced (Sidney Hanson, the third party the defendants passed customer funds to (22 years' imprisonment); not the named defendants), 2011-04-01
Defendants	Gary D. Martin (individual) ; Brenda K. Martin (individual) ; Queen Shoals Consultants, LLC (entity)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $5.8m
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $5.8m
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 supplemental order of May 14, 2013 sets penalties of $4.32 million on Queen Shoals and Gary Martin and $1.44 million on Brenda Martin, with joint and several liability. The August 2011 consent order had found that they defrauded customers with false claims of trading expertise and guaranteed profits when no forex trading occurred.

The release says the Martins turned customer funds over to Sidney Hanson for referral fees, and that Hanson was separately charged with, and convicted over, a Ponzi scheme. The Martins themselves are not described as operating it, so the ponzi-schemes tag the record carried has been removed. The record also showed a criminal parallel that concerns Hanson, not these defendants.

Timeline

2014-03-31 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.

Record added September 20, 2026. submit a correction.