CFTC v. Gregory Demetrius Bryant, Jr. (ponzi schemes, 2021)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. CFTC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

✓ 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 September 2021 the CFTC sued Gregory Bryant Jr., formerly of Hawaii, in a forex and futures Ponzi scheme: he allegedly took about $426,000 from at least 35 pool participants, spent at least $356,000 on personal costs and paid at least $66,000 in Ponzi payments to conceal the scheme.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

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 complaint on September 16, 2021 (release 8426-21) in the District of Hawaii, covering September 2016 to June 2020. Bryant used the alias Gregory Surrey England and a nonexistent firm, Surrey Libor Capital, LLC, and promised returns of $6,000 to $8,000 or 60 to 80%.

The defendant was recorded as "Former Hawaii Resident"; he is now named. The slug carries a benchmark-rigging label that the record does not.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes it as a scheme paying earlier investors with later investors' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Checked on 2026-10-04: no outcome found on CFTC pages; a CFTC search of its press releases for this defendant returns only the September 2021 filing release. The District of Hawaii record shows the clerk entered default against Bryant on December 9, 2021 for failing to respond. On March 21, 2022 the magistrate judge recommended denying the CFTC's motion for final default judgment and setting the default aside, and on May 31, 2022 the district judge adopted that recommendation, so no judgment had been entered as of that order. We found no later order, so the matter stays recorded as filed.

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. 2021-09-16 CFTC release published
2. 2022-05-31 Court declines default judgment and sets aside the entry of default

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 order or complaint
• Findings and recommendation on default judgment (D. Haw., Doc. 23)
• Order adopting findings and recommendation (D. Haw., Doc. 29)

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. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.