CFTC v. Lanzana, Masanko, Blackbox Pulse and White Cloud Mountain (ponzi schemes, 2017)

Judgment entered

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In August 2017 the CFTC charged Thomas Lanzana, Nikolay Masanko and their companies Blackbox Pulse, LLC and White Cloud Mountain, LLC in New Jersey with fraud and misappropriation in a forex Ponzi scheme that took at least $700,000, and obtained an asset freeze. In March 2019 the court entered a default judgment and permanent injunction against all four.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$2m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$2m

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 August 21, 2017 in the District of New Jersey, alleged the defendants solicited customers for forex trading pools and other investments, misappropriated customer funds and violated registration requirements. A court order froze assets and protected records.

Outcome: according to a CFTC press release of April 2, 2019, the court entered an order of default judgment and permanent injunction on March 15, 2019. The release says it ordered the four defendants to pay $762,807.24 in restitution and a $1.95 million civil monetary penalty, and found that they had sent customers account statements and videos of forex trades that never happened. This was a default result: the release does not describe any admission by the defendants. The restitution figure is not stored in a separate field here. The release does not say how much was collected. The record named only Lanzana, with a residence description inside the name.

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. 2017-08-24 CFTC release published
2. 2019-03-15 District of New Jersey enters default judgment and permanent injunction; $1.95 million penalty and $762,807.24 restitution (announced April 2, 2019)

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 press release 7907-19 (default judgment)

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.