CFTC v. Nicholas Gelfman and Gelfman Blueprint, Inc. (ponzi schemes, 2017)

Settled

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In September 2017 the CFTC filed its first anti-fraud action involving Bitcoin, charging Nicholas Gelfman and Gelfman Blueprint, Inc. in Manhattan with operating a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme that solicited over $600,000 from about 80 people. In October 2018 the court entered a default order against the company and a consent order against Gelfman, with penalties of $2.03 million and restitution of about $1.05 million.

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 complaint alleged that from about January 2014 to January 2016 the defendants claimed a high-frequency algorithmic strategy run by a program called Jigsaw, that the strategy was fake, and that they issued false account statements and misappropriated funds.

Outcome: a CFTC press release of October 18, 2018 says Judge P. Kevin Castel entered an order for final judgment by default against Gelfman Blueprint on October 2, 2018 and a consent order against Gelfman on October 16, 2018, which together resolve the complaint. The release says the orders find a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme and a staged fake computer hack, and require the company and Gelfman to pay $1,854,000 and $177,501 in civil penalties and $554,734.48 and $492,064.53 in restitution respectively, and impose permanent trading and registration bans. The penalty stored is the sum of the two penalties; restitution has no field in this record. The release is the CFTC's description of orders whose text we did not open.

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.

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. 2017-09-21 CFTC release published
2. 2018-10-16 Consent order against Gelfman (default order against Gelfman Blueprint on October 2, 2018); CFTC announcement October 18, 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 press release 7831-18 (final orders)

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.