CFTC v. Cartu et al. (rigged binary options execution, 2024)

Judgment entered

Machine-extracted, pending human review. The structured fields on this page were parsed automatically from the regulator's own release, linked below. Read the primary document before relying on any figure here, and tell us if something is wrong.

In 2024, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission obtained a default judgment against Jonathan Cartu, Leeav Peretz, Nati Peretz and Blue Moon Investments Inc., alleging conduct this library classifies as rigged binary options execution. The order finds them liable for offering illegal binary options and orders $51,155,645 in disgorgement and a $153,466,935 civil penalty, over $204 million combined.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$153m

Disgorgement

$51.2m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$205m

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 on March 14, 2024, as release 8877-24, that a court in the Western District of Texas had entered final default judgment against four of the respondents from its September 2020 case (release 8231-20): Jonathan Cartu, Leeav Peretz, Nati Peretz and Blue Moon Investments Inc.

Since late September 2015, per the order, these defendants ran an internet-based binary-options operation that misstated how risky the product was for customers and — the finding this library treats as central — steered the outcome of some customer positions toward a loss purely to benefit themselves. More than $51.1 million is found to have been taken from U.S. customers through the scheme.

This library tags the matter as rigged binary options execution on the strength of the order's own finding that trade results were manipulated, not merely that risk was misrepresented.

Joint and several liability for $51,155,645 in disgorgement is imposed, alongside a $153,466,935 civil penalty, and the four are permanently barred from CFTC registration and from trading anywhere the CFTC regulates. The remaining respondents from the 2020 complaint — David Cartu, Joshua Cartu, Ryan Masten, and every entity besides Blue Moon Investments Inc. — are untouched by this particular judgment and stay recorded under this library's entry for the original complaint.

A standard fraud-advisory paragraph the CFTC attaches to many binary-options releases, warning generally that operators "manipulate software to generate losing trades," also appears here; this library does not rely on that boilerplate paragraph for its tag, only on the specific finding against these four defendants quoted above.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

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.

• Rigged binary options execution — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2020-09-02 CFTC civil enforcement action filed
2. 2024-03-14 Default judgment and permanent injunction entered

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 8877-24
• CFTC release 8231-20 (original complaint announcement)

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.

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 29, 2026. submit a correction.