CFTC v. Dro Kholamian and Blue Star Trading, LLC (2022)

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 2022 the CFTC announced a consent order in Chicago requiring Dro Kholamian and Blue Star Trading to pay $227,000 in restitution and a $150,000 penalty, with permanent trading and registration bans, for fraudulently soliciting $995,000 for forex and futures trading and misappropriating $227,000. He faced criminal wire fraud counts.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	CFTC
Release number	8504-22
Date filed	2022-03-22
Date resolved	2022-03-22
Court	U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
Status	judgment
Criminal parallel	Yes: sentenced (Kholamian), U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, 2021-09-03
Sentence	4 years
Bars imposed	trading ban
Defendants	Dro Kholamian (individual) ; Blue Star Trading, LLC (entity)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $150k
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $150k
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 announced the order of March 21, 2022 on March 22, 2022 (release 8504-22), resolving its 2018 action. Some clients were found through his Armenian church. Misappropriated money paid other clients in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme and his own expenses.

The Ponzi tag is removed because the order finds solicitation fraud and misappropriation. The record had no defendants; they are now named. The 2018 complaint is the same matter (cftc-chicago-area-trader).

Timeline

2022-03-22 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.

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.

Date filed	Agency	Record	Status
2018-12-17	CFTC	CFTC v. Dro Kholamian and Blue Star Trading, LLC (2018)	Settled
2022-03-22	CFTC	CFTC v. Dro Kholamian and Blue Star Trading, LLC (2022)(this record)	Judgment entered

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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.