CFTC v. NYMEX (2020)

Settled

Checked against the primary document on October 2, 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 August 2020 a federal court entered a consent order resolving the CFTC's case against NYMEX and two former employees, requiring a $4 million payment and permanently banning the employees from trading, over repeated disclosure of non-public customer trade information to a broker.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	CFTC
Release number	8216-20
Date filed	2020-08-04
Date resolved	2020-08-04
Court	U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Status	settled
Asset class	commodities, futures
Venue	NYMEX
Criminal parallel	No
Bars imposed	trading ban
Defendants	NYMEX (entity)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $4m
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $4m
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 Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced the consent order on August 4, 2020 as release 8216-20.

The order finds employees William Byrnes and Christopher Curtin directly liable for improperly disclosing material non-public information and NYMEX vicariously liable; Byrnes and Curtin are permanently banned from trading commodity interests and registering with the CFTC.

The case concerns disclosures by exchange staff, not trading on inside information, so the insider-trading tag has been removed.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

Timeline

2020-08-04 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.

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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.