CFTC v. unnamed respondents (ponzi schemes, 2021)

Judgment entered

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In April 2021 the CFTC announced a Nevada federal court default judgment against David Saffron and Circle Society for a cryptocurrency and binary options pool fraud, requiring $14,841,280 in restitution, $15,815,967 in disgorgement and a $1,484,128 civil monetary penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.5m

Disgorgement

$15.8m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$17.3m

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 court found that from December 2017 Saffron took at least $15.8 million in bitcoin and dollars from at least 179 people for a pool he promised would return up to 300%, held participants' funds in his own wallet and paid some participants with other participants' money, and left most participants unable to withdraw anything. The final judgment of March 29, 2021 permanently bans both defendants from CFTC-regulated markets.

The release headline says "more than $32 million", which adds restitution, disgorgement and the penalty together. The record had entered $32 million as the penalty; the penalty is $1,484,128.

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. 2021-04-08 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
• CFTC order or complaint
• CFTC order or complaint
• CFTC order or complaint

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.