CFTC v. Cifuentes, Wee and Cifuentes Fund Management (ponzi schemes, 2016)

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 September 2016 the CFTC alleged that a New Jersey couple and their fund company ran a sham forex pool. On April 20, 2018 the District of New Jersey ordered the three defendants, jointly and severally, to pay $457,120 in restitution and a $1,770,000 civil penalty, and permanently banned them from the markets the CFTC regulates. A parallel criminal case had been filed.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.8m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$1.8m

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 this action on September 30, 2016 as release 7463-16. It alleged that from April 2013 through March 2015 Alcibiades Cifuentes, Jennifer Wee Cifuentes and Cifuentes Fund Management, LLC solicited pool participants and misappropriated the money.

The technique tag is this library's own reading of the conduct the regulator describes; agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

The CFTC's May 8, 2018 release (7724-18) reports that the District of New Jersey entered an order on April 20, 2018 finding the sham-pool scheme and requiring the defendants, jointly and severally, to pay $457,120 in restitution plus a $1,770,000 civil monetary penalty, with post-judgment interest. The order permanently bans them from CFTC-regulated markets and enjoins future violations. The release notes that federal prosecutors had separately indicted the Cifuentes defendants; it does not report the criminal outcome, and this record does not state one. The penalty is recorded once, not per defendant. Checked on 2026-10-04.

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. 2016-09-30 CFTC release published
2. 2018-04-20 District of New Jersey enters order with restitution, penalty and permanent trading ban (CFTC release of May 8, 2018)

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 release on the court order (7724-18)

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 10, 2026. submit a correction.