The Non-Financial Ledger

Think about the feeling of finally having enough money to invest. Maybe it took you years. Maybe it came from selling a house, an inheritance, years of grinding. You do your homework. You look at the numbers. The returns are extraordinary. The auditor’s name is right there on the documents. There’s a whole advisory board of experienced professionals listed with photos. You get on a call, and the man running the fund sounds confident. The monthly statements arrive like clockwork, and every month your balance goes up.

That was the experience the CFTC says Middlebrooks engineered for the people who put their money into EIA All Weather Alpha Fund I. One of those people wired $1 million on May 29, 2020, based directly on a fabricated Performance Sheet and a fake Investor Presentation. Another wired $1.6 million the following year, also after reviewing falsified documents. Both continued to increase their investments based on monthly account statements showing ever-growing balances. Every single one of those balances was a lie.

The betrayal here goes deeper than the financial loss. Middlebrooks did not simply make bad trades and hide the results. He constructed an entire counterfeit reality: fake performance numbers going back further than the fund even existed, fake auditor names from firms that had never worked with him, a fake advisory board that included at least two people who had never agreed to serve. He maintained this fiction for nearly five years across dozens of investors, month after month, update after update. Every communication was a fresh act of fraud against people who had trusted him with real money they could not afford to lose.

The CFTC’s complaint documents that existing investors kept increasing their positions based on the false monthly statements. That means Middlebrooks’s lies did not just capture an initial investment. They worked repeatedly, persuading the same people to go deeper and deeper into a fund that was destroying their capital the entire time. By the time the CFTC filed suit in August 2022, the damage had been accumulating for five years.

Legal Receipts

“the Fund had a total cumulative return to date of 476.81 percent and that in the months of trading to date, 81.82 percent of them were ‘winning months.’ In reality, EIA and the Fund had lost money every year (and almost every month) since the Fund’s inception.” CFTC Complaint, Paragraph 28 — describing the Q3 2019 Investor Presentation

• This proves that by at least September 2019, Middlebrooks was distributing documents claiming a 476% cumulative return while the fund had been losing money consistently since it opened. The gap between the claimed figure and reality was absolute, not a matter of methodology or interpretation.
• The “winning months” statistic makes this more deliberate: claiming 81.82% of months were profitable requires either keeping detailed records (which would have shown the truth) or fabricating a specific enough number to appear credible.

“the December 2021 Performance Sheet claimed that the Fund had yearly positive returns of 117.25% (2017), 54.31% (2018), 71.94% (2019), 135.74% (2020), 86.66% (2021). This Performance Sheet also claimed that the Fund had a total cumulative return to date of 2,436.43 percent… In reality, the Fund had negative returns in each of those years.” CFTC Complaint, Paragraph 29

• Every single annual return figure in the December 2021 Performance Sheet was fabricated. Every year shown as profitable was in reality a losing year. The specificity of these numbers, including fractions of a percentage point, was calculated to appear credible rather than invented.
• A claimed cumulative return of 2,436.43% is the kind of number that would attract the attention of anyone who saw it. That appears to have been the point: extraordinary enough to generate excitement, specific enough to seem real.

“on information and belief Middlebrooks fabricated financial statements for the Fund and a related audit report for year-end 2020… Middlebrooks requested an engagement proposal from Audit Firm 3 in August 2021 as well as ‘templates of the reports and statements’ used by Audit Firm 3 and a ‘sample of a completed audit.'” CFTC Complaint, Paragraphs 59-60

• This documents the mechanism of the forgery: Middlebrooks did not simply make up numbers and attach a fake name. He obtained actual document templates from a real audit firm under the pretext of engaging them, then, on information and belief, used those templates to construct a fraudulent audit report.
• Audit Firm 3 last heard from Middlebrooks on September 1, 2021. The fake year-end 2020 audit report was subsequently distributed to at least two investors who then sent additional funds. The timing shows the fabricated report was produced and deployed in the months after Middlebrooks went silent with the actual firm.

“Defendants deposited approximately $21 million of Fund participant funds into trading accounts at one particular brokerage firm. Defendants’ trading in these accounts resulted in realized losses of more than $16 million. Further, almost 90 percent of these losses were incurred trading futures and futures options.” CFTC Complaint, Paragraph 24

• Of the $21 million deposited at a single brokerage, more than $16 million was lost in realized trading losses. That is a loss rate of more than 76% at one brokerage alone during the Relevant Period.
• The concentration in futures and futures options, which accounted for nearly 90% of losses, means the fund was not simply underperforming a diversified strategy. It was actively destroying capital through leveraged instruments at a rate that would have been immediately obvious to anyone seeing real account data.

Public Deception

Every layer of communication Middlebrooks used to reach investors was falsified. The gap between what investors were told and what was actually happening was not a matter of optimistic projections or disputed accounting. It was a systematic substitution of fabricated numbers for real ones, across every document type the fund produced.

• Performance returns: Performance Sheets and Investor Presentations claimed yearly positive returns of 117.25% (2017), 54.31% (2018), 71.94% (2019), 135.74% (2020), and 86.66% (2021). The CFTC’s complaint states the Fund had negative returns in each of those years.
• Cumulative returns: The Q3 2019 Investor Presentation claimed a total cumulative return of 476.81%. The December 2021 Performance Sheet claimed 2,436.43%. Both figures were fabricated; the fund was losing money during those entire periods.
• Pre-existence performance: Performance Sheets and Investor Presentations claimed fund performance data going back to January 2017. The fund was not formed until June 2017. The performance history for those first six months did not exist to report.
• Assets under management: Claimed AUM grew from $4 million in January 2018 to $139,071,427 in a purportedly audited financial statement. The CFTC states that AUM representations in excess of $40 million were false.
• Auditors: Multiple audit firms were named in investor materials as the fund’s auditor. None of them had ever been a client of EIA or the Fund. One firm signed an engagement letter that was never acted upon; its document templates were then used, on information and belief, to forge an audit report.
• Advisory board: Investor Presentations listed a five or six-member advisory board with photographs and professional backgrounds. At least two of those individuals had never served on the board.
• Monthly account statements: Statements delivered through an online investor portal showed positive returns and growing account balances month after month throughout the relevant period. All of these balances were fabricated; the fund was losing money every year.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Financial Trust

Commodity pool fraud erodes the foundational trust that makes private investment possible. When fabricated performance documents are indistinguishable from legitimate ones, every investor in every fund faces higher skepticism costs.

• Investors who had not yet committed money were given fabricated Performance Sheets and Investor Presentations that caused them to make initial million-dollar-plus investments. The CFTC documents two specific cases: Fund Participant 1 investing $1 million on May 29, 2020, and Fund Participant 2 investing $1.6 million around May 6, 2021, each after reviewing falsified documents.
• Existing investors who received false monthly account statements continued to increase their contributions to the fund, compounding their losses. The mechanism of the fraud was specifically designed to capture additional capital from people already inside, by convincing them their existing investment was growing.
• The use of a real engagement letter with a legitimate audit firm, and the apparent use of that firm’s watermarked templates to forge documents, means even sophisticated investor due diligence practices (requesting audited financials, verifying auditor names) were specifically designed to fail.
• Neither Middlebrooks nor EIA was ever registered with the CFTC. EIA claimed an exemption from CPO registration. The CFTC’s suit makes clear that no registration exemption protects a fund operator from the anti-fraud provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act.

Economic Inequality

Private commodity pools typically require substantial minimum investments, meaning the fraud targeted people with meaningful accumulated wealth. The documented investments show individual participants committing sums that represent years of savings for most people.

• The two specifically documented initial investments totaled $2.6 million between two participants. The complaint notes these were initial investments, with both participants continuing to increase their positions based on false monthly statements.
• The CFTC’s complaint covers “dozens” of Fund participants across the Relevant Period, with the fund accepting millions of dollars in total. The complaint seeks full restitution for every person who sustained losses proximately caused by the described violations.
• The promise of extraordinary returns, including claimed annual gains of over 100%, specifically targets people trying to grow wealth faster than wage growth allows. The gap between what those returns would have meant and the reality of total loss is the measure of financial harm per participant.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs

The structure of the fraud was designed not just to attract initial investment but to extract maximum capital from each participant over the longest possible period.

• Monthly account statements delivered through a third-party internet portal showed positive returns and growing account balances in every reporting period throughout the Relevant Period. The CFTC states every one of these statements was false. Their function was to prevent existing investors from withdrawing their money and to encourage them to invest more.
• The fund claimed 85 percent winning months as of December 2021. The more specific and impressive the claimed statistics, the more credible the fund appeared to prospective investors reviewing materials. Fabricating specific percentages rather than round numbers was a deliberate tactic to manufacture legitimacy.
• The escalating AUM claims served a specific function: signaling that other sophisticated investors had already committed large sums and done their own due diligence. A fund claiming $130 million in AUM appears to have passed market scrutiny. That appearance was entirely manufactured.
• Approximately $21 million of investor funds were deposited at a single brokerage and generated more than $16 million in realized losses. The fund continued accepting new investment throughout this period of documented catastrophic trading failure.

The Case and What Was Asked For

The CFTC filed its complaint on August 19, 2022. The relief sought is significant on paper, but the architecture of the fraud determines how much real restitution is possible.

• The CFTC sought permanent injunctions barring Middlebrooks and EIA from trading commodity interests, operating commodity pools, soliciting funds for any commodity investment, and working in any capacity for any CFTC-registered entity. This would effectively end Middlebrooks’s ability to operate in the regulated financial industry.
• The complaint seeks full restitution to every investor who sustained losses, plus disgorgement of all benefits received from the violations, including salaries, commissions, loans, fees, revenues, and trading profits. Pre- and post-judgment interest was also requested.
• Civil monetary penalties were sought under 7 U.S.C. § 13a-1(d)(1), which authorizes penalties as adjusted for inflation under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act. Each individual act of misrepresentation or omission was charged as a separate and distinct violation, which means the total penalty calculation compounds across dozens of participants and years of monthly false statements.
• The source document is a complaint, not a final judgment. Whether full restitution was ever collected from Middlebrooks, or whether assets exist to satisfy a judgment, is not documented in the source material.

How Capitalism Exploits Delay: Five Years of Unchallenged Fraud

The scheme documented in the CFTC complaint ran for nearly five years before legal action was filed. The timeline shows how the fraud deepened and expanded at each stage, with new investors drawn in and existing investors convinced to add more money, all while the fund’s actual performance was catastrophic.

• The fund was incorporated on June 12-13, 2017. Performance materials were backdated to January 2017, a period six months before the fund legally existed, to create the illusion of a longer and more successful track record.
• Throughout each year from 2017 through 2021, the fund reported to investors that it had posted positive annual returns while suffering actual annual losses. Each year’s false annual report was followed by continued investor contributions.
• In August 2021, Middlebrooks contacted an actual audit firm and obtained document templates. By September 1, 2021, that firm had heard nothing further from him. On information and belief, the templates were subsequently used to forge a year-end 2020 audit report.
• The forged audit report was then distributed to at least two fund participants who subsequently sent additional funds. The forgery produced fresh investment capital from existing investors.
• Oral representations of $110 million in AUM were made in February or March 2022. By March 2022, that claim had risen to $130 million. The scheme continued through at least April 2022.
• The CFTC filed its complaint on August 19, 2022. The complaint itself noted that unless restrained and enjoined, Defendants were likely to continue engaging in the alleged conduct.

How the Structure Was Built

Middlebrooks constructed a layered entity structure that placed himself at the center while creating the appearance of institutional legitimacy around the fund.

• Middlebrooks was the sole owner, sole member-manager, CEO, Chief Investment Officer, and portfolio manager of EIA All Weather Alpha Fund I Partners, LLC, the entity that controlled the fund. Every decision, every document, every misrepresentation originated from or required the approval of one person.
• EIA was the General Partner and Commodity Pool Operator of EIA All Weather Alpha Fund I, LP. The LP structure created the appearance of a professional investment vehicle with a distinct management company overseeing it, standard in the hedge fund and private placement industry.
• EIA claimed an exemption from CFTC registration as a CPO. That claim of exemption did not exempt the defendants from the anti-fraud provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act, which apply whether or not a CPO is registered, required to register, or claims an exemption.
• Investors signed Subscription Documents, received a Private Placement Memorandum and a Limited Partnership Agreement, and accessed their (false) account statements through a third-party internet portal. Each layer of professional documentation reinforced the appearance that this was a properly constituted and operated fund.

This Is the System Working as Intended

The conditions that allowed this fraud to operate for five years are not anomalies. They are features of how private investment markets are structured and regulated.

• EIA claimed an exemption from CFTC registration as a Commodity Pool Operator. The existence of registration exemptions for fund operators means that a subset of commodity pool operators face no baseline registration scrutiny, no periodic examination, and no direct oversight. A fraudster seeking to operate outside regulatory sight has a legal mechanism to do so at the outset.
• Monthly account statements were delivered through a third-party online investor portal, not directly from a regulated custodian or clearinghouse. Investors had no independent verification pathway. They could see numbers on a portal that Middlebrooks controlled but could not independently verify them against actual trade records at a regulated exchange or broker.
• The audit requirement existed in the fund’s own governing documents but was never enforced by any external body. The LPA promised annual audited financial statements within 120 days of each fiscal year-end. Those statements were never produced. No regulator caught this absence; it took a CFTC investigation to document it.
• The private placement structure under which the fund operated, the use of Subscription Documents and a PPM, is specifically designed to allow fundraising outside the public securities registration framework. That structure, intended to limit offerings to sophisticated investors, also limits outside visibility into whether fund claims are accurate.
• Investors had no practical way to know that Audit Firm 3 had never completed an audit, that the financial statements labeled with that firm’s name were fabricated, or that Audit Firm 1 and Audit Firm 2 had never worked with the fund. The information gap between fund operator and investor in private placement structures is structural, not incidental.

What a Legitimate Fix Looks Like

The following recommendations are editorial analysis grounded in the specific failure modes documented in this case. They do not represent findings of the source document.

The core structural failure this case exposes: fund operators who claim registration exemptions can solicit millions of dollars from dozens of investors across years with no mandatory external verification of their performance claims, auditor relationships, or account statements.

What Now?

The defendants named in this case are Andrew M. Middlebrooks and EIA All Weather Alpha Fund I Partners, LLC. The complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Michigan, Case No. 2:22-cv-11943. If you invested in the EIA All Weather Alpha Fund I and lost money, contact the CFTC directly.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies

• CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission): The lead agency on this case. Reports of commodity fraud, including unregistered CPOs and falsified fund performance, can be filed through the CFTC’s SmartCheck tool and its whistleblower program at whistleblower.gov.
• SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission): Depending on the instruments involved and how a fund is structured, overlapping jurisdiction with the CFTC can apply in private fund fraud cases. The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy provides investor verification tools.
• DOJ (Department of Justice): The Eastern District of Michigan U.S. Attorney’s Office provided local counsel to the CFTC in this case. Criminal referrals for wire fraud and related conduct are possible in parallel with civil CFTC proceedings.
• NFA (National Futures Association): The NFA’s Background Affiliation Status Information Center (BASIC) allows anyone to verify whether a fund operator is registered, exempt from registration, and whether any disciplinary history exists. Neither Middlebrooks nor EIA were registered. Check BASIC before investing in any commodity pool.

What You Can Do

• Before investing in any private fund: verify the operator’s registration status on the NFA’s BASIC database and the SEC’s EDGAR system. If an auditor is named in offering materials, call that firm directly to confirm the engagement before signing anything.
• Request independent custodial statements: any legitimate fund should be able to provide account verification that originates from the custodian holding the assets, not only from internal portal access. If a fund operator cannot provide this, treat it as a red flag.
• Report suspected commodity fraud to the CFTC’s whistleblower program. Reports can be made anonymously. If the fraud led to losses, the CFTC’s reparations process may offer a path to recovery. Contact information for the CFTC is at cftc.gov.
• Support organizations advocating for stronger investor protection in private placement markets, including the Consumer Federation of America and state-level investor protection coalitions. The structural gaps this case exposed are not unique to one fund operator.