CFTC v. Simmons, Salazar and their companies (ponzi schemes, 2015)

Settled

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In July 2015 the CFTC announced consent orders in the Western District of North Carolina imposing a total of $76 million in civil penalties on Keith F. Simmons, Deanna Salazar and their companies over a forex Ponzi-style scheme. Simmons received 40 years and Salazar 4.5 years in related criminal cases.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$76m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$76m

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 orders arise from a January 2011 CFTC complaint alleging fraudulent solicitation and misappropriation, and impose permanent trading and registration bans. The criminal cases produced a 40-year sentence for Simmons, recorded here as 480 months, and a 4.5-year sentence for Salazar, with $40 million in combined criminal restitution.

The record showed no penalty and a single defendant; the $76 million is the combined penalty across both sets of defendants, so it is not one person's figure.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document 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. 2015-07-31 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 10, 2026. submit a correction.