CFTC v. Taylor, OTC Investments, Forex Currency Trade Advisors (ponzi schemes, 2015)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. CFTC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 3, 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 April 2015 the CFTC charged Barry C. Taylor of Franklin, North Carolina and his firms OTC Investments LLC and Forex Currency Trade Advisors, LLC with commodity pool fraud that it alleges paid purported profits and principal from other participants' money in the manner of a Ponzi scheme, and obtained an emergency asset freeze.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

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

A sealed complaint dated April 21, 2015 alleges that, from no later than August 2011, the defendants collected more than $2.4 million from about 24 people in the United States and Canada for a forex pool, traded only part of the money, misappropriated the rest for personal and business use, and issued false account statements. The Western District of North Carolina froze assets on April 22.

The allegations are unproven and no relief had been ordered. The record showed a criminal parallel the release does not mention, and carried "North Carolina Resident" and "His Companies" as names.

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. 2015-04-30 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. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.