CFTC v. Defendants (ponzi schemes, 2014)

Judgment entered

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In February 2014 an Ohio federal court granted summary judgment to the CFTC against Patrick Cole and Global Strategic Marketing for fraud in a forex Ponzi scheme, ordering $1,146,399 in disgorgement and civil monetary penalties of $1,146,399.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.1m

Disgorgement

$1.1m

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 court found Cole liable for the company's violations because he controlled it and made its decisions, imposed permanent trading and registration bans, and ordered the two defendants to pay the sums above. The case followed an October 2010 complaint; a May 2013 judgment against the company's principals in the related CDL Ponzi case is mentioned separately in the release.

The record carried the status "filed" and listed the defendant only as "Defendants"; this is a final judgment and the respondents are Cole and Global Strategic Marketing.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the order or release describes payments to earlier participants made from later participants' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

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. 2014-03-21 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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 20, 2026. submit a correction.