Raging Bull Trading Lawsuit: What the FTC Case Found

RagingBull.com is a New Hampshire company, founded in 2014 by Jeff Bishop and Jason Bond, that sells stock and options trading courses and real-time trade alerts by subscription. In December 2020 the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued it, alleging it sold those subscriptions with false earnings claims and made them hard to cancel, and that consumers had lost at least $137 million to it in three years. Raging Bull and its owners settled in March 2022 for $2.425 million without admitting liability, and the FTC sent nearly $2.4 million back to 9,862 customers in March 2023. The company calls the outcome "a total vindication" and still operates.

So "is Raging Bull legit" has a two-part answer. It is a real, working business that delivers the alerts and videos it sells. What the FTC challenged was the promise attached to them: that following the alerts would make you money. The company never tracked whether it did.

Imagine April 2020. You are 63, the market has just crashed, and your retirement account is down a third. An email lands saying a Raging Bull trader "was able to rack up nearly $500K in profits by trading stocks related to the COVID-19 pandemic" and has found a "hidden bull market." A free webinar offers to show you how to "DOUBLE or TRIPLE your account in One Week!" The subscription costs a few hundred dollars. Missing the recovery feels more expensive than that.

Both of those lines are quoted in the FTC's case. The FTC said many of the people who bought were retirees, older adults and immigrants, which the company disputes. This page goes through what Raging Bull claimed, what the regulator found, what the company says in its defence, and how to check any trade alert service before you hand over a card number.

Key facts about Raging Bull

Unless another source is named, the claims and quotes below come from the FTC's second amended complaint, dated 11 June 2021 and filed with the court on 15 March 2022. A complaint is the FTC's account. No court ruled on whether it was true, because the case settled.

Is Raging Bull a scam? What the FTC alleged

The FTC sued Raging Bull, Bishop, Bond, Dennis and their companies in December 2020 as part of Operation Income Illusion, a sweep of more than 50 actions against income schemes. On 8 December 2020 a federal court in Maryland granted a temporary restraining order with an asset freeze and a temporary receiver.

The complaint's summary is two sentences long: Raging Bull sells trading services it says "generate substantial profits," and "the problem is Defendants have no proof that their trading strategies generate such profits for consumers, and in fact the typical consumer does not make substantial income when attempting to deploy them."

It charged three counts:

1. False or unsubstantiated earnings claims, against all defendants.
2. Misleading claims about who can succeed: that beginners, people trading a few minutes a day and people with very small accounts would make substantial income.
3. No simple way to cancel recurring charges, a breach of the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA), against Raging Bull, Bishop and Bond.

"Raging Bull's baseless earnings claims and hard-to-cancel subscriptions cost consumers millions," said Samuel Levine, then Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, when the settlement was announced on 8 March 2022.

Six Raging Bull claims, checked against the record

Did Jason Bond turn $100,000 into $430,000?

In a marketing email in March 2020, Bond wrote that he "made over 180% in 2015 and then in 2016 I turned a $100,000 account into $430,000! A massive 330% returns [sic]," and that "2018 is no different because of my market-tested strategy that myself and thousands of members are using for HUGE success."

The FTC says Bond "later told the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation that he lost money in 2018." More broadly, the complaint says both founders "incurred substantial and persistent losses" from their own trading, and that their income came mainly from subscription fees, which the ads did not say.

Was Jason Bond invited to speak at Harvard?

Raging Bull ads said Bond was invited to speak at Harvard Business School and showed video of him doing so. The complaint says "Defendants paid for Bond to speak on or near Harvard's campus for promotional purposes; Bond was never invited by the school or any of its affiliates." The Times Square billboard mentioned in other ads was "a paid advertisement." CBS News, reporting on the FTC's filing on 8 December 2020, added that the agency said Bond paid a third-party promoter to stage the event at the Harvard Faculty Club.

Did Kyle Dennis guarantee trading profits?

In a webinar called "Mortal Lock," Dennis promised his trades targeted 100% returns: "Double or nothing. Put your money on black, spin it . . . Just like the casino, but this isn't 50/50, this is more like 95/5." He "guarantees," the complaint says, that a Mortal Lock trade would make at least $1,997 on a single trade, about 400% on $500. Other ads had him saying he made "about $9,100 per day" in 2019.

The FTC says Dennis "has admitted in a sworn deposition that he does not track his subscribers' results and lacks data showing what a typical consumer earns." It also says he had received complaints from consumers who lost substantial sums on alerts he had promised would return 400% to 800%. The FTC's September 2023 release says Dennis "pocketed more than $13.6 million personally from the scheme," and the complaint says the Biotech Breakouts brand he fronted took over $40 million from consumers in three years.

Could beginners with small accounts profit in minutes a day?

The ads said so. For Total Alpha: "it's even better if you're brand new because there's no bad habits to break." For Profit Prism: turn a $1,000 account into $10,000. For several services: 10 to 30 minutes a day, or one alert a week.

The FTC's answer is in paragraph 93. The stocks and options in the alerts "tend to be low-volume securities with prices that move rapidly and with great volatility, particularly when Defendants issue trade alerts." In a thinly traded stock, many followers buying on the same alert can push the price up before most of them get in. Many consumers also found, the complaint says, that alerts arrived late or not at all, including buy alerts with no matching sell alert.

Were the testimonials typical?

The ads quoted customers who made "[$]6500.00 in 20 MINUTES" and "$500 in 15 min[utes]." Raging Bull's own disclaimers, the FTC says, admitted that "subscribers' trading results have NOT been tracked or verified" and that "the results presented in this communication are NOT TYPICAL." On purchase pages, those disclaimers sat in a scrolling "Terms & Conditions" box below the buy button, several pages long.

Bishop told the FTC the company kept no data on what percentage of its trades succeeded or how much any guru or service made over time, so Raging Bull "is unable to provide a 'track record.'"

Could you cancel?

Services renewed quarterly or annually. Many could not be cancelled online. Customer service had long holds and disconnections, the complaint says, and some subscribers were charged for renewals they had tried to stop. Refund requests were "routinely" denied, and some people who complained to the Better Business Bureau got refunds only if they took the complaint down or marked it resolved.

The money machine: how Raging Bull sold subscriptions

1. The ad. Google, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube ads, many with private jets and expensive hotels, plus affiliates paid to send traffic and mass email.
2. The free hook. A webinar or e-book, such as "Learn how you could DOUBLE or TRIPLE your account in One Week!"
3. The webinar. The instructor's backstory, selected winning trades, testimonials and a "limited-time" discount.
4. The checkout. More earnings claims and testimonials next to the payment form, with the disclaimers in a scroll box underneath.
5. The upsell. Emails pushing new services, special deals and "lifetime" access. Unhappy subscribers were often steered to a different service or an upgrade.
6. The renewal. Automatic quarterly or annual charges.

Where the money went, per the complaint: Bishop's company Sherwood Ventures received more than $36 million from Raging Bull in five years, and Jason Bond LLC more than $12 million. Dennis received over a third of the net revenue from Biotech Breakouts. In 2018, renegotiating that deal, he wrote to Bishop: "I'm ready to crank these sales as much as we can in anyway [sic] we can!"

Who is behind Raging Bull?

• Jeff Bishop, co-founder and CEO, who owns 65% of the company through Sherwood Ventures and leads services such as Total Alpha and Bullseye Trades.
• Jason Bond, born Jason Kowalik, co-founder and President, who owns 25% through Jason Bond LLC and fronted services such as Jason Bond Picks. Raging Bull's story of him, per the complaint, is a former gym teacher $250,000 in debt who became a "stock trading millionaire."
• Kyle Dennis, an instructor who joined in 2016 and described himself as "Director and Co-Founder of Biotech Breakouts."

Their side

Raging Bull answered the settlement in a post on its own site, "Raging Bull Fends Off FTC Blindside," dated 21 March 2022. It says the FTC sued without any "pre-complaint inquiry or investigation directed at Raging Bull," that "Raging Bull rebutted every core allegation made by the FTC," and that the court denied the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction that would have shut the company down. It disputes the claim that it targeted immigrants and retirees, saying the FTC never had demographic data. It calls the result "a negotiated settlement," reached "without any admission of liability," for "about 2% of the amount that the FTC had first sought," and "in effect, a total vindication for Raging Bull."

New Hampshire Public Radio reported on 24 March 2022 that the firm kept operating through the case "under the oversight of a court-appointed monitor."

We found no public statement from Kyle Dennis.

How the Raging Bull case ended

The company and founders. The court entered the stipulated order against Raging Bull, Sherwood Ventures, Jason Bond LLC, Bishop and Bond on 15 March 2022, according to the FTC's litigation status report. They paid $2.425 million. They may not make any earnings claim without written evidence that it is typical. They may not claim people can succeed regardless of experience, money or time. They must get express consent before a recurring charge, offer an easy way to cancel, keep cancellation holds under 10 minutes, and return cancellation voicemails within one business day.

Kyle Dennis. He kept fighting until 2023. His order, entered 11 September 2023, permanently bans him from earnings claims he cannot prove are typical. It contains no payment.

New Hampshire. The state's Bureau of Securities Regulation filed its own cease-and-desist order in December 2020, CBS News reported. NHPR reported that in 2021 Raging Bull settled with the state, agreeing to return more than $700,000 to investors and pay $675,000 in fines.

Why Raging Bull customers got so little back

$2.4 million against alleged losses of $137 million is less than 2 cents on the dollar. The reason is a Supreme Court case.

In April 2021, four months into this lawsuit, the Supreme Court ruled in AMG Capital Management v. FTC that the FTC could not use Section 13(b) of the FTC Act to win money back for consumers in federal court. The FTC said in September 2023 that because of AMG, "none of the money that Dennis earned from the scheme could be sought by the FTC to provide refunds." Raging Bull's own statement says the ruling "rejected in a unanimous decision the core legal basis of the FTC's lawsuit."

The FTC paid out in March 2023: 9,862 PayPal payments, nearly $2.4 million in total. That programme is closed. The lesson for any subscriber is that the money you pay a trade alert service is very unlikely to come back, whatever a regulator later finds.

How to read a trading track record before you subscribe

1. Ask for every trade, not the best ones. A real record lists every alert with entry, exit and date, including losers. Selected wins like "1600% on one trade" prove nothing about the next trade.
2. Ask what subscribers made, in total. "What percentage of last year's subscribers finished the year up?" If the answer is that results are "not tracked," the earnings claims have no basis. Raging Bull's own disclaimer said exactly that.
3. Ask where the guru's money comes from. If the trader earns more from subscriptions than from trading, the subscriptions are the business.
4. Check the stocks. Alerts in thinly traded penny stocks and cheap options move the price against followers the moment they go out.
5. Find the cancel button before you pay. If you cannot see how to cancel online in under a minute, assume renewals will be hard to stop.
6. Check regulators. Search the seller's name on ftc.gov and your state securities regulator's site. In this case, New Hampshire had acted too.
7. Compare with doing nothing. If a service cannot beat a low-cost index fund over a full year after its own fees, it has cost you money.

How Fake Gurus Fabricate Income Proof (And How to Spot It) shows how screenshots of winning trades are chosen. The Quantum AI case study covers a darker version of the same promise, a "trading bot" sold with deepfakes.

What to do instead

If you want to learn options trading, learn the mechanics and the risks first, with small amounts you can afford to lose. Our options trading guide covers the costs and the risks. Paper trade for three months and keep a record of every trade. If your own record is not profitable, a stranger's alerts will not fix it.

The stakes are real either way. Take a retiree who spends $3,000 a year on alerts and then loses money acting on them: every year of that is a year of retirement savings they have to rebuild, by working longer or spending less later. Another retiree puts the same $3,000 a year into a broad index fund and gets the market's return, minus a small annual fee. The second plan is dull, and nobody has to sell it to you with a private jet.

More case studies from this series: Click Profit and Elias Yoder, the AI influencer behind the Amish channel.