CFTC v. GBI (ponzi schemes, 2018)

Judgment entered

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In October 2018 a New York federal court entered default and consent judgments against Gelfman Blueprint, Inc. and its CEO Nicholas Gelfman for a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme that took more than $600,000 from at least 80 customers. Civil penalties total about $2.03 million, restitution about $1.05 million, with permanent trading and registration bans.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$2m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$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 CFTC announced the judgments on October 18, 2018 (release 7831-18), resolving its September 2017 complaint in the Southern District of New York. The orders find that customers were told their money was in a pool run by a high-frequency algorithm called Jigsaw, that the strategy and performance reports were fake, and that payouts came from other customers' funds; Gelfman staged a fake hack to explain the missing money. GBI is ordered to pay a $1,854,000 penalty and $554,734 in restitution, Gelfman a $177,501 penalty and $492,065 in restitution.

The record carried the release's "over $2.5 million" headline, which mixes restitution and penalties, as the penalty and named only "GBI". The penalty field now holds the two civil penalties added together, and both defendants are named.

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.

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. 2018-10-18 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.

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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 20, 2026. submit a correction.