CFTC v. Carlos Javier Ramirez, Royal Leisure International, Inc. and Gold Chasers, Inc. (2019)

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 2019 the CFTC announced a Florida federal order requiring Carlos Ramirez and his companies Royal Leisure International and Gold Chasers to pay $2.74 million in restitution and civil penalties of $8.23 million for fraudulently selling physical gold and misappropriating over 90 percent of nearly $3 million of customer funds.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	CFTC
Release number	7881-19
Date filed	2019-03-04
Date resolved	2019-03-04
Court	U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida
Status	judgment
Asset class	commodities
Criminal parallel	No
Bars imposed	trading ban
Defendants	Carlos Javier Ramirez (individual) ; Royal Leisure International, Inc. (entity) ; Gold Chasers, Inc. (entity)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $8.2m
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $8.2m
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 order of February 5, 2019 (release 7881-19, Middle District of Florida) finds that some customers received fabricated profit payouts, a Ponzi-style feature. Ramirez and Royal Leisure owe $1,980,858 restitution and a $5,942,574 penalty; Ramirez and Gold Chasers owe $761,831 and $2,285,493. It also bans them from trading, solicitation and registration.

The record carried $5,942,574, which is one company's share, and named the defendants only as "Defendants"; the penalty now totals the two orders. The Ponzi tag is removed because the order finds a gold-sales fraud with false profits to some customers as a side feature.

Timeline

2019-03-04 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.

CFTC release

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
2017-02-14	CFTC	CFTC v. Ramirez, Gold Chasers and Royal Leisure International (ponzi schemes, 2017)	Judgment entered
2019-03-04	CFTC	CFTC v. Carlos Javier Ramirez, Royal Leisure International, Inc. and Gold Chasers, Inc. (2019)(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.