CFTC v. Marcus Todd Brisco, Tin Quoc Tran and others (ponzi schemes, 2023)

Settled

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In February 2023 the CFTC charged Marcus Todd Brisco, Tin Quoc Tran, the SAEG parties and others over three connected commodity pool schemes. On November 22, 2024 the Southern District of Texas entered a consent order against Brisco requiring a $350,000 penalty and $1.65 million of restitution, which the CFTC says concludes the case against all defendants; only Brisco's amount is recorded.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$350k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$350k

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 this matter on February 23, 2023 as release 8665-23. The complaint alleges three interconnected commodity pool scams, including one in which Tran took at least $144 million from about 913 participants, and that Story, Safranko and SAEG lied to the National Futures Association to conceal them. A statutory restraining order froze defendants' assets on 6 February 2023.

This library tags the matter as a Ponzi scheme because the document describes returns to earlier investors paid from later investors' money, as alleged or found. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Outcome: a CFTC release of December 5, 2024 reports that the Southern District of Texas entered a consent order against Brisco, of Hawaii, which was filed November 22, 2024. It permanently enjoins him from further violations as charged, imposes permanent trading and registration bans, and requires a $350,000 civil monetary penalty and $1.65 million of restitution to victims. The order finds he ran two fraudulent commodity pools, Yas Castellum LLC (at least 43 participants, more than $470,700) and Yas Castellum Financial LLC (at least 66 participants, over $1.9 million), and did not send the funds to be traded. The release says the court had already entered judgments or consent orders against the other defendants and that this order resolves the action against all of them. I did not open those other orders, so only Brisco's penalty is recorded; the restitution has no field in this record.

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. 2023-02-23 CFTC release published
2. 2024-11-22 Consent order against Marcus Todd Brisco (S.D. Tex.): $350,000 penalty, $1.65 million restitution, permanent bans; resolves action against all defendants

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 order or complaint
• CFTC order or complaint
• CFTC press release on consent order against Brisco
• Consent order against Marcus Todd Brisco

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.