CFTC v. Jacob Bourne (mismarking, 2018)

Settled

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In November 2018 the CFTC filed and settled charges against Jacob Bourne, a former Deutsche Bank Securities managing director, for mismarking inflation swap valuations in June and July 2017 to hide estimated trading losses of more than $16 million. He must pay a $350,000 penalty and is permanently banned from trading on exchanges and from CFTC registration. The CFTC issued a declination letter to Deutsche Bank.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$350k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$350k

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 this settled order on November 8, 2018 as release 7838-18. The respondent is Jacob Bourne (1 individual, 0 entities); earlier versions of this record listed the defendant as "Former Deutsche Bank Trader" and as an entity.

The order describes a stretch from mid-June to early July 2017 in which Bourne, then a managing director at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., entered wrong valuations for inflation swaps to conceal estimated trading losses above $16 million, ignoring the bank's policy on how end-of-day marks were entered in an internal spreadsheet. After the bank confronted him over discrepancies, he altered historical versions of the spreadsheet to look compliant. The mismarked swaps were reported to counterparties and the CFTC. The order finds this was fraud under the commodities laws.

Bourne agreed to a $350,000 civil penalty and permanent trading and registration bans. The bank's self-report, cooperation and remediation led the Division of Enforcement to issue its first public declination letter to Deutsche Bank AG and Deutsche Bank Securities, closing the related investigation; no relief is recorded against the bank.

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.

• Mismarking — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2018-11-08 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.