CFTC v. California and Colorado Residents (ponzi schemes, 2020)

Judgment entered

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The CFTC announced on July 15, 2022 that the Eastern District of California entered a default judgment against John Black, his entities, two associates and Colorado lawyer John Glenn and his firm, ordering about $10.5 million in restitution and about $19 million in penalties, plus trading and registration bans.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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 complaint on July 8, 2020 (release 8197-20) in the Eastern District of California. A restraining order of July 2 froze assets.

The record named the defendants only as "California" and "Colorado Residents" and listed a trading ban that had only been sought; the eight defendants are now named and the bans, once only sought, are recorded as imposed.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes it as a scheme paying earlier investors with later investors' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Outcome. CFTC release 8556-22 (July 15, 2022) reports an order granting the CFTC's motion for default judgment against Black, Financial Tree, Financial Solution Group, New Money Advisors, Christopher Mancuso, Joseph Tufo, John Glenn and his law firm. It finds them liable for fraud, registration violations and pool-operator violations and orders about $10.5 million in restitution jointly (with $4.5 million of it also owed by Tufo), penalties of about $5.4 million (Black and the three entities), $12.1 million (Mancuso), $680,000 (Tufo) and $850,000 (Glenn and his firm), and permanent bans. Because the release gives these figures as approximations, the money fields are left empty. The entry date is not stated, so the release date is used.

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. 2020-07-08 CFTC release published
2. 2022-07-15 CFTC announces default judgment against Black, Glenn and affiliates

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 release 8556-22 (default judgment)

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.