CFTC v. Wright (ponzi schemes, 2013)

Settled

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In June 2013 the CFTC charged C. David Wright of Iron Station, North Carolina, in the Western District of North Carolina with running a $1 million commodity pool Ponzi scheme and misappropriating participants' funds. Wright consented on October 28, 2013 to an order with findings of fraud and permanent trading and registration bans, and the CFTC reported on July 10, 2015 a supplemental order imposing a $1 million penalty. He was sentenced to four years in prison in a parallel criminal case.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$1m

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, filed June 24, 2013, alleges that from at least August 2008 to March 2013 Wright, who was never registered with the CFTC, took over $1 million from individuals, told them it would go into varied investments including futures, and misappropriated nearly all of it for personal expenses and profit payments to participants.

The record's name carried a description.

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.

Outcome. The CFTC's July 10, 2015 release (which names him Carl David Wright) says Judge Richard Voorhees entered a Consent Order on October 28, 2013 finding that Wright committed fraud in a commodity pool Ponzi scheme, imposing permanent trading and registration bans and prohibiting further violations, and later entered a Supplemental Order imposing a $1 million civil monetary penalty. The consent order finds that he told participants their money would go into varied investments but misappropriated most of it for personal expenses and so-called profit payments. The release says that in October 2014 Judge Robert Conrad sentenced him in United States v. Wright to four years in prison with $817,975 in restitution. The release gives its own date rather than the date of the supplemental order, so the resolved date is the announcement date. It states no disgorgement.

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. 2013-06-25 CFTC release published
2. 2013-10-28 Consent order: fraud findings, permanent trading and registration bans (as reported July 10, 2015)
3. 2015-07-10 CFTC announces supplemental order imposing $1 million penalty

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 7196-15 (consent and supplemental 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.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.