CFTC v. Forex Trading Firms and Principals (ponzi schemes, 2019)

Judgment entered

✓ 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 April 2019 the CFTC sued three Florida forex pool firms and five principals over a scheme in which pool participants sent over $80 million that was largely lost or taken. In December 2023 a Florida federal court entered summary judgment against Michael DaCorta (December 6) and consent orders against the other seven defendants (December 15), with restitution of $53.3 million and penalties and disgorgement totalling about $16.9 million. DaCorta was convicted in a parallel criminal case and is serving 23 years.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$14.6m

Disgorgement

$2.3m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$16.9m

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 CFTC announced the action on April 22, 2019 (release 7915-19) in federal court in Florida. It alleged a $75 million forex pool scheme involving more than 700 participants, with only $21 million reaching trading accounts and being lost, over $28 million paid out in Ponzi-like payments and over $18 million spent personally. A court froze assets and appointed a receiver, and nine relief defendants were named. This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the release describes later participants' money paying earlier ones; the tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

Outcome. A December 2023 CFTC release says Judge Covington of the Middle District of Florida granted summary judgment against DaCorta on 6 December 2023, finding him liable on every violation alleged, and entered consent orders on 15 December 2023 against the three firms and Anile, Duran, Montie and Haas. The orders require $53,270,336.08 in restitution from DaCorta, the firms and Anile; a civil penalty of $8,453,628.48 on DaCorta; a $5,000,000 penalty on Anile; disgorgement of $779,738.75, $432,608.15 and $1,103,597.24 and penalties of $389,869.38, $216,304.08 and $551,798.62 on Duran, Montie and Haas respectively. The record's money fields are the sums of those penalties ($14,611,600.56) and disgorgement ($2,315,944.14); the restitution is not stored in them. The release says DaCorta was convicted in May 2022 and is serving a 23-year prison term (276 months). It does not state the bans, if any, in the orders, so none are recorded. The summary judgment is a ruling by the court, the others are settlements; the relief defendants were not checked.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

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. 2019-04-22 CFTC release published
2. 2023-12-06 Summary judgment entered against Michael DaCorta: restitution and $8,453,628.48 penalty
3. 2023-12-15 Consent orders entered against the three firms, Anile, Duran, Montie and Haas

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 press release 8842-23 (summary judgment and consent orders)

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.