CFTC v. Sam Ikkurty, Ravishankar Avadhanam and Jafia LLC (2022)
Judgment entered
Checked against the primary document on October 4, 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.
In May 2022 the CFTC sued Oregon man Sam Ikkurty, Jafia LLC and related funds over alleged crypto-fund Ponzi schemes. After summary judgment for the CFTC in July 2024, the court entered a final judgment on July 22, 2024 with $83,757,249 in restitution, $36,967,285 in disgorgement and a $110,901,855 penalty.
The record
| Agency | CFTC |
|---|---|
| Release number | 8532-22 |
| Date filed | 2022-05-19 |
| Date resolved | 2024-07-22 |
| Court | U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | crypto, futures |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Bars imposed | permanent CFTC registration ban (Ikkurty and Jafia), permanent trading ban (Ikkurty and Jafia) |
| Defendants | Sam Ikkurty a/k/a Sreenivas I Rao ; Ravishankar Avadhanam ; Jafia LLC ; Ikkurty Capital LLC d/b/a Rose City Income Fund ; Rose City Income Fund II LP ; Seneca Ventures LLC |
| Techniques |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- $111m
- Disgorgement
- $37m
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- $148m
- Alleged gain
- —
What is alleged to have happened
The CFTC announced the complaint on May 19, 2022 (release 8532-22) in the Northern District of Illinois, charging fraudulent solicitation, operating an unregistered commodity pool and failure to register. Funds were allegedly distributed to other participants in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme and sent to an offshore entity.
The Ponzi tag is removed because the complaint charged a commodity pool fraud and uses "akin to a Ponzi scheme" once. The record named the defendants only as "Oregon", "Illinois Residents" and a company, with an unknown status; these are corrected.
Outcome. The Northern District of Illinois granted the CFTC summary judgment on all counts (CFTC release 8931-24, July 3, 2024), finding the defendants committed fraud and failed to register and describing the funds as Ponzi-like. Its final judgment of July 22, 2024 (Doc. 376), announced in release 8959-24, orders restitution of $83,757,249 and disgorgement of $36,967,285 offset by restitution paid, jointly and severally against Ikkurty, Jafia and the funds, plus a $110,901,855 civil monetary penalty, and permanently bans Ikkurty and Jafia from registering with the CFTC and trading commodity interests. Ikkurty separately owes a $13,817,000 contempt fine for moving digital assets out of the receiver's wallets and a further $254,000 fine for non-compliance. The release totals the judgment at $209,614,892. This is a litigated result; the stored figures are the penalty and disgorgement, and restitution has no field here. The record also names Ravishankar Avadhanam, whose outcome we did not check.
Timeline
- 2022-05-19 CFTC release published
- 2024-07-03 Summary judgment for the CFTC announced (release 8931-24)
- 2024-07-22 Final judgment entered
Primary documents
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