CFTC v. Rashawn Russell (2023)

Settled

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In April 2023 the CFTC charged New York resident Rashawn Russell with soliciting investors for a digital asset fund and misappropriating customer money. On January 16, 2025 the Eastern District of New York entered a consent order requiring more than $1.5 million of restitution, a permanent injunction, a permanent registration ban and an eight-year trading ban; he also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to over three years in prison in a parallel criminal case.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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 matter on April 11, 2023 as release 8686-23. The complaint alleges that Russell solicited retail investors for a digital asset fund with guaranteed returns, traded little, and misappropriated at least $1 million, including for personal expenses, gambling entities and Ponzi-like payments. A parallel wire fraud indictment was unsealed.

This library does not tag the matter as a Ponzi scheme: on a source check, the document mentions Ponzi-like payments only in passing, or as part of another party's scheme, and the charges are about something else. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

A parallel criminal proceeding is referenced. Civil and criminal outcomes are recorded separately, because they resolve on different standards of proof.

Outcome: the CFTC announced on February 10, 2025 that the Eastern District of New York had entered a consent order, filed January 16, 2025, resolving its action against Russell. The order finds that from November 2020 to August 2022 he solicited more than two dozen retail customers to contribute bitcoin, ether and cash to a purported trading fund, made false statements about it, did not trade as represented, and misappropriated over $1.5 million, spending it on personal costs, gambling-related entities and Ponzi-like payments. It requires restitution of over $1.5 million, permanently enjoins him, bans him permanently from registering with the CFTC and from trading for others, and bars him from trading for himself for eight years. No civil penalty is stated. The CFTC release adds that Russell pleaded guilty to wire fraud and, in a separate count, access device fraud, and was sentenced to over three years in prison with three years of supervised release; the exact sentence is not stated there, so no sentence length is recorded.

Timeline

1. 2023-04-11 CFTC release published
2. 2025-01-16 Consent order entered (E.D.N.Y.): restitution over $1.5 million, injunction, registration ban, eight-year trading ban

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
• CFTC press release on consent order
• Consent order against Rashawn Russell

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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.