CFTC v. Agridime LLC, Joshua Link and Jed Wood (ponzi schemes, 2024)

Judgment entered

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In May 2024 the CFTC charged Agridime LLC and co-founders Joshua Link and Jed Wood over an alleged $161 million cattle-program Ponzi scheme. A CFTC release dated June 16, 2025 reports a consent order against Agridime for $102,936,904 in restitution and default judgments against Link and Wood ordering disgorgement of $815,327.92 and $1,472,127.92, with permanent injunctions and trading bans.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$2.3m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$2.3m

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 Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced this matter on May 14, 2024 as release 8911-24. The complaint alleges that Agridime and its two co-founders received more than $161 million from over 2,000 customers for a cattle program, paid undisclosed commissions, and used later customers' money to pay earlier ones in the manner of a Ponzi scheme.

This library tags the matter as a Ponzi scheme because the document describes returns to earlier investors paid from later investors' money, as alleged or found. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Outcome. CFTC release 9087-25 (June 16, 2025) reports a final judgment and consent order against Agridime, which is in receivership, requiring $102,936,904 in restitution and permanently enjoining it and barring it from CFTC registration and from trading in CFTC-regulated markets. The release also reports default judgments against Link and Wood. The Link default judgment, signed on June 2, 2025 in the Northern District of Texas, orders disgorgement of $815,327.92 for Link and $1,472,127.92 for Wood, with injunctions and trading and registration bans. The stored disgorgement is the sum of those two amounts (restitution has no field of its own, and the release says such orders may not lead to any recovery if the defendants lack funds). The date stored is that of the default judgment; the release does not state a separate date for the consent order. In the parallel SEC case, litigation release LR-26415 reports final judgments on September 19, 2025 against the same three defendants, separate from the amounts above.

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. 2024-05-14 CFTC release published
2. 2025-06-02 Default judgment signed against Joshua Link and Jed Wood
3. 2025-06-16 CFTC announces consent order against Agridime and default judgments (release 9087-25)

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 release 9087-25 (judgments)
• Default final judgment as to Link and Wood (N.D. Tex., Doc. 43)

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 4 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.

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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.