CFTC v. CME Group’s New York Mercantile Exchange and Two Former Employees (2013)

Settled

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 4, 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 February 2013 the CFTC sued the New York Mercantile Exchange and two former employees, William Byrnes and Christopher Curtin, over repeated disclosure of confidential customer trade information to an outside broker. The CFTC announced on August 4, 2020 that a consent order in the Southern District of New York resolved the charges against all three, with a $4 million joint and several penalty. No trading on the information by anyone was alleged.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$4m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$4m

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 the complaint on February 21, 2013 as release 6519-13, filed in the Southern District of New York.

The complaint says Byrnes, over about two and a half years, and Curtin, over about ten months, knowingly disclosed material non-public information about NYMEX trades and customers cleared through CME ClearPort, including the parties, brokers, volumes, prices and structures, to a broker not authorised to receive it. NYMEX is charged as the employer.

This is unauthorised disclosure of customer information by exchange staff, not dealing on inside information, so the insider-trading tag has been removed.

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.

Outcome. According to the CFTC's August 4, 2020 release, a consent order entered in the Southern District of New York resolved the charges against NYMEX, Byrnes and Curtin. The order finds Byrnes and Curtin directly liable and NYMEX vicariously liable for the disclosures, bans Byrnes and Curtin permanently from trading commodity interests and from registering with the CFTC, and enjoins future violations. It sets a $4 million civil monetary penalty, joint and several across the three defendants, with Byrnes's share capped at $300,000 and Curtin's at $200,000. The consent order itself is a signed settlement; the release does not give a separate disgorgement figure. The case against the outside broker, Ron Eibschutz, was not covered by this order and is recorded on its own page.

Timeline

1. 2013-02-21 CFTC release published
2. 2020-08-04 CFTC announces consent order resolving charges against NYMEX, Byrnes and Curtin

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 release 8216-20 (settlement)
• Consent order as filed (S.D.N.Y. 13 Civ. 1174)

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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.