Traders Domain Lawsuit: The CFTC's $280 Million Ponzi Case

Traders Domain (The Traders Domain, or Traders Domain FX) was an offshore trading platform registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines that took deposits for a pooled gold-trading account. On 30 September 2024 the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued it, its co-founders Ted Safranko and David Negus-Romvari, and the promoters who recruited for it, calling it a $280 million Ponzi scheme. The CFTC alleges more than 2,000 customers deposited at least $283 million, that much of the money was never traded, and that new deposits paid earlier investors' withdrawals. A court froze the defendants' assets and appointed a receiver, Kelly Crawford. As of 29 October 2026 the case has not gone to trial, the CFTC says settlement talks with the remaining defendants have "significantly advanced," and the receiver has recommended allowing more than $127 million in investor claims.

If you are searching for a "Traders Domain lawsuit update," that is where it stands. If you put money in, the claims deadline was 28 July 2025, and the receiver has said plainly that the estate will not have enough to pay everyone back in full.

Think about how many investors heard about it: from someone they knew. A friend, a colleague or a contact from a business network showed you their phone: an app with a gold-trading account climbing week after week, statements arriving every day, "never had a losing month." They had even withdrawn money. Maybe they were going to earn a commission on your deposit, and maybe they did not say so.

That is the pattern the CFTC describes. The rest of this page lays it out: what investors were shown, what the regulator says was really happening, who is accused of what, and how to check a managed trading account before you fund it.

Key facts about Traders Domain

Unless another source is named, the facts below come from the CFTC's complaint, filed under seal on 30 September 2024 and unsealed on 11 October 2024. Everything in it is an allegation. No court has ruled on the merits, and several defendants are contesting the case.

Is Traders Domain a scam? What the CFTC alleges

The CFTC announced the case in press release 8997-24 with the headline "CFTC Charges Several People and Companies in a $280 Million Ponzi Scheme." Its core allegations against the platform and its founders:

1. Most of the money was not traded. "Only a fraction, if any, of the funds deposited for the purpose of participating in the TD were actually traded," the complaint says. Deposits went to third-party bank accounts, a payment processor and crypto wallets. The CFTC says none of the money paid into the bank accounts or the processor, at least $19 million through the processor alone, "were ever sent to TD or any other firm that engaged in trading."
2. New money paid old investors. The CFTC says TD used deposits to make "Ponzi-style payments to other customers." It quotes Safranko on a video call around November 2022 saying "transfers coming in" can be used to "exit[] people out with that deposit."
3. The records were faked. "To conceal the fraud, TD and Safranko falsified trading records," including the daily statements customers received.
4. Nobody was registered. TD acted as an unregistered commodity pool operator, the CFTC says, while its website claimed it was a "registered and licensed brokerage firm" that did not take US customers. Most of its customers lived in the US.
5. The money never came back. From the fall of 2022, withdrawals stalled. In June 2023 customers were told TD had been acquired by Trubluefx. Thousands of customers have since been unable to withdraw.

The CFTC charges the founders and Trubluefx with fraud and misappropriation, and the sponsors with fraud for soliciting customers when they "knew or should have known" TD was not trading the money as claimed.

What investors saw, and what the CFTC says was happening

That last row matters for anyone reading this before investing in something similar. The CFTC's own public warning list flagged TD in July 2022, more than two years before the lawsuit. The complaint says the Algo promoters kept soliciting after that without telling customers.

How Traders Domain grew: the hub and the spokes

The CFTC describes TD as a hub with "sponsors" as spokes. From around January 2021, TD recruited people and companies "many of whom had established social media followings, MLM networks, or other clientele" to bring in customers. It paid them commissions "sometimes as high as 60 percent of customers' purported trading profits."

The four sponsor groups named in the case brought in the most money:

• Algo Capital and Algo FX (Miami area). The CFTC says one of their people told a prospect their own algorithm "never had a losing month and usually generated monthly returns of around twenty percent."
• Centurion Capital Group (Florida). Its people advertised "40-60% monthly returns" and a "10%+ Monthly ROI DEAL" on social media, according to the complaint.
• Michael Shannon Sims. The receivership site notes that an earlier CFTC case in Houston (No. 4:23-00336) also involved Sims and Safranko, through a receivership over Marcus Todd Brisco and others.
• Holton Buggs Jr., covered in the next section.

Because each sponsor collected commissions on "profits" that the CFTC says did not exist, every sponsor had a reason to keep new money coming. The complaint says that after withdrawals stalled in 2022, the sponsors "ignored or downplayed the withdrawal issues and continued to solicit funds," which kept the scheme going "for more than six months" and took "millions of additional dollars."

Holton Buggs and Traders Domain

What the CFTC alleges. Buggs, who the complaint describes as having a "large network of MLM businesses," began soliciting for the TD Pool in 2021. The CFTC says he offered access to his "private trading hedge fund" through his "private broker" as a reward for hitting sales levels in his other businesses, and kept TD's identity hidden until associates reached a higher level and signed a non-disclosure agreement. The complaint says he told people the pool "never had a losing month," that he was making 30% or more a month, and showed screenshots of a 4,000% annual return. It quotes a text he sent a business associate: "I HAVE A MONEY PRINTING MACHINE." It also says he told prospects risk was capped at 3% to 4% a trade. The CFTC charges him with fraud for soliciting customers he "knew or should have known" were not being traded for.

His side. Buggs fought the case. In an omnibus motion filed on 22 November 2024, he asked the court to dismiss the complaint, arguing it lacked specific allegations against him and that a Florida court had no jurisdiction over him. He asked the court to lift the asset freeze and receivership, saying they were harming businesses of his that had nothing to do with TD. On 15 January 2025 he agreed to a preliminary injunction. On 17 January 2025 Judge Altman denied his motion to dismiss, finding nothing "conclusory, generalized, or insufficient" about the complaint and that the court had jurisdiction.

Denying a motion to dismiss means the case can go forward. It is not a finding that he did anything. As of 29 October 2026, no court has ruled on the CFTC's allegations against him.

Traders Domain timeline

Dates after the complaint come from the CFTC's case page, its customer alerts and the receivership site.

The Traders Domain claims process and refunds

Can you still file? The court-approved deadline was 28 July 2025. The CFTC warned in its 3 June 2025 alert that filling in its earlier voluntary survey "does NOT qualify an individual as a claimant"; only an official claim counts. If you missed the deadline, contact the claims agent, Stretto, at [email protected] or (855) 693-5100, and ask whether late claims are being considered. Do not assume they are.

Where it stands. In a 9 February 2026 letter to claimants, the receiver enclosed his Amended Claims Report and set 5 March 2026 as the deadline to object to his recommendation on each claim. His site states: "With the Receiver recommending the allowance of claims totaling more than $127 million, the receivership estate will not recover sufficient funds to pay all investors the full amount of their allowed claim amounts." After the court rules on objections, he will ask it to approve a distribution plan. The date and size of the first payment "are not known at this time."

What the receiver is recovering. The site lists court-approved property sales, including real estate in Miami Lakes, Florida, and a settlement with a jewellery business he had sued to recover money transferred out of the scheme.

If you filed in another case. Claims filed in the Algo Capital assignment proceeding in Florida were transferred to this receivership. People who claimed in the Brisco receivership in Houston can file here too, but must disclose what they already received.

Watch for recovery scams. Anyone who asks you for a fee to speed up or "recover" a Traders Domain payout is not the receiver or the CFTC. Use only tradersdomainreceivership.com and the Stretto portal.

How to check a managed trading account before you fund it

1. Search the CFTC's RED List of unregistered foreign entities. Traders Domain was on it from July 2022.
2. Check registration on NFA BASIC, the National Futures Association's free lookup. Anyone running a pool or managing commodity or forex trading for US customers generally has to be registered. TD was not, and neither were most of its sponsors, the CFTC says.
3. Follow the money on day one. Your deposit should go to a regulated broker in your own name, never to a third-party bank account, a payment processor or a personal crypto wallet. TD customers wired money to third-party accounts.
4. Treat "never a losing month" as a warning. Margin trading in gold loses money some months. A record with no losing months is either not trading or not telling you.
5. Get statements from the broker, not the manager. An app run by the same people taking your money can show any number they like.
6. Ask your recruiter how they are paid. If they earn a cut of your profits, as TD's sponsors did, they have a reason to keep you in that has nothing to do with whether the trading is real.
7. Test a withdrawal early. A small withdrawal that arrives proves little, because Ponzi schemes pay early withdrawals. A slow one, explained by "liquidity" or "system updates," is your cue to stop depositing.

Our forex trading guide explains what real retail currency and gold trading costs and how trading on borrowed money works against beginners. The Quantum AI case study covers a different pitch with the same promise: someone else's system trades for you and you watch the balance grow.

What to do instead

If you want a professional to manage money for you in the US, use a registered adviser or a registered commodity trading adviser whose record you can check, with your money held by a regulated custodian in your name. It will not promise 20% a month. Nothing legitimate does.

The cost of getting this wrong is concrete. Customers in this case have waited since 2022 for money they cannot withdraw, and the receiver's best case is a partial refund years later. The plain alternative, a broad index fund at a regulated broker, is slower. It is also still there when you log in.

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