CFTC v. Trader and his Company (ponzi schemes, 2019)

Settled

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In September 2019 the CFTC sued Virginia trader Leonard Cipolla and his firm Tate Street Trading, alleging they took about $7.1 million from pool participants and misappropriated or paid out most of it. In May 2021 the CFTC announced a consent order against Cipolla requiring $5,102,283.51 in restitution and imposing permanent trading and registration bans; litigation against Tate Street continued. Cipolla was sentenced to 121 months in prison in a parallel criminal case.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

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 CFTC announced the complaint on September 19, 2019 (release 8020-19) in the Eastern District of Virginia. Promised returns were 8 to 30% a year while trading was profitable in only two years, and statements misreported results. They are also charged with failing to register as a pool operator and adviser. The CFTC sought restitution, penalties and bans.

The record named the defendants as "Trader and his Company", showed the status as unknown and a trading ban that had only been sought; all three are corrected.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes it as a scheme paying earlier investors with later investors' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Outcome (Cipolla only). The CFTC's release of 14 May 2021 says the Eastern District of Virginia entered a consent order against Cipolla requiring $5,102,283.51 in restitution, with a permanent injunction and permanent trading and registration bans; no civil penalty is stated. The order, as the release describes it, records Cipolla's admission that he fraudulently solicited about $7.1 million between 2009 and 2019, misappropriated more than $2.5 million and made more than $3 million of Ponzi-like payments. The release also reports that he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and acting as an unregistered pool operator and on 1 July 2020 was sentenced to 121 months in prison. It says the case against Tate Street Trading, Inc. continued, and I did not check how that ended, so the outcome here covers Cipolla only; the date used is the release date.

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. 2019-09-19 CFTC release published
2. 2020-07-01 Cipolla sentenced to 121 months in prison in the parallel criminal case (as reported by the CFTC)
3. 2021-05-14 CFTC announces consent order against Cipolla ($5,102,283.51 restitution, trading and registration bans); case against Tate Street continues

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 8388-21 (Cipolla consent order)

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.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.