$283 Million Gone: How Traders Domain Turned Forex Dreams Into a Federal Fraud Case

EvilCorporations.com • Case No. 1:24-cv-23745-RKA, S.D. Fla. • 62 min read

A federally sealed complaint, filed September 30, 2024, in Miami’s Southern District of Florida, names 16 defendants across a scheme that used social media hype, MLM-style recruitment, fake trading records, and a revolving door of excuses to lock thousands of ordinary people out of their savings. Here is what they did, how they did it, and who helped them do it.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What $283 Million in Stolen Savings Actually Feels Like

Somewhere between the CFTC’s numbered paragraphs and the dollar figures sits something the complaint cannot fully capture: what it felt like to be on the other end of this scheme.

You found Traders Domain the way a lot of people find things these days. Maybe it was an Instagram post. Maybe it was someone in your church, your neighborhood, your extended family. Maybe it was a slick presentation in a Miami conference room. Someone you trusted told you this was real. They showed you a trading app. They showed you numbers going up, month after month, nearly always positive. They told you the algorithm never had a losing month. They told you returns of 5,000% in 2021. Seven thousand percent in 2022. They told you this was how wealthy people invested. They told you the best hedge funds lock up your money for months; that is just how high finance works.

So you wired money to a bank account you had never heard of, in the name of a company that had nothing to do with trading, because a person you trusted told you that was the process. Your TD account lit up within 48 hours. The money was there. The trades were there, ticking along in a mobile app. You watched your balance grow.

Then you tried to get some of it out.

The first excuse was a compliance screening backlog. Then it was incorrect wire information from other customers damaging TD’s banking relationships. Then it was a “stress test” of the new banking system. Then it was a 45-business-day window. Then they promised everything would clear by January 31, 2023. Then Safranko showed you a letter from a UAE financial firm claiming to hold $150 million and an audit from a Mexican accounting firm showing $500 million in net revenue. When you asked him to log in and prove it, he refused. When you pressed for a follow-up meeting, it never came. When you stopped hearing from him altogether, you started to understand what had happened.

One customer documented the trades being retroactively altered in the app, prices changed to levels the gold market never actually reached on those days. Screenshots. Evidence. TD called it a technical issue. Algo called theirs a server glitch. The sponsor who sold you the product told you your money was safe. He told you there was “no fear about the safety of your money” while, in messages to his colleagues the same day, he wrote that they were “fucked.”

Some customers reached out to Algo Capital to retrieve their funds, only to learn that their contracts said nothing about Traders Domain. They had never agreed to send their money to an offshore brokerage in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They had never heard of Ted Safranko. They had paid Algo Capital. They had signed an Algo Capital contract. The broker “is not mentioned anywhere in my 7-page contract,” one customer wrote. Another wrote: “I have no idea who Traders Domain or Ted Safranko are, but I have a contract with Algo Capital where I deposited money to be invested, and then requested the withdrawal of those funds last year.” These are not hedge fund clients who knew the risks of complex instruments. These are people who trusted a salesman who came recommended by someone they knew.

More than two years after withdrawal problems began, thousands of customers still cannot get their money back. The complaint was filed September 30, 2024, and notes that upon information and belief, the majority of customer funds have not been returned. Trubluefx, the shell company that absorbed TD’s customer accounts in June 2023 and promised a “smooth flow of withdrawals,” continues to hold those accounts. As of October 20, 2023, it was still blaming “the current economic and banking situation.”

The number $283 million does not convey someone’s retirement account. It does not convey a family’s down payment. It does not convey the moment a person realizes the person they trusted was, according to federal regulators, comparing Safranko to a prior Ponzi schemer who “held clients off for 2 years” with unsubstantiated excuses, and continuing to take their money anyway.

How They Built It: The Full Structure of the Traders Domain Fraud

The complaint describes a scheme with multiple, interlocking layers. TD sat at the center; a network of paid sponsors extended outward; and thousands of customers sat at the edges, unable to see what was actually happening to their money.

• The offshore shell: TD was incorporated in October 2017 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a jurisdiction with minimal regulatory oversight. Its principal operations were run out of Canada. It was never registered with the CFTC as a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO), which is legally required when soliciting U.S. customers for pooled commodity trading. Its website falsely claimed it did not accept U.S. customers; simultaneously, it and its sponsors actively recruited U.S. customers and instructed them to list “CRYPTO” as their country of origin in account setup forms because “USA” was not offered as an option.
• The product: TD offered PAMM (Percentage Allocation Management Model) accounts and “copy trading” accounts, and beginning in January 2021, a specific pooled vehicle called the “TD Pool” or “High-Risk PAMM” account. Customers were told they were pooling money to trade gold (XAU/USD) on a leveraged basis. Purported returns were advertised as exceeding 5,000% in 2021 and 7,000% in 2022. Customers could monitor their accounts through a trading app but could not execute trades or withdraw funds themselves.
• The lie about how funds were traded: The complaint alleges TD claimed to use an algorithmic “bot” to trade. In fact, Safranko was purportedly trading manually. More critically, the complaint alleges only a fraction of customer funds, if any, were ever actually sent to a trading account. Instead, the money went to third-party bank accounts with no connection to trading.
• The fake trading records: Daily confirmation statements were emailed to customers showing nearly always-positive trading results. When customers occasionally observed large losses in the app, TD explained them as “slippage,” “system errors,” or a “standing agreement with the liquidity provider” to reverse bad trades within 24-48 hours. In fact, the complaint alleges TD simply altered trade prices retroactively to times and levels where the market was never actually trading.
• Where the money actually went: Customer funds flowed through three main channels. At least $180 million was deposited into U.S. bank accounts held in the names of third-party entities controlled by a TD agent. None of those entities traded. At least $19 million went through a Utah-based payment processor that also never forwarded the funds to any trading firm. At least $16 million more went through cryptocurrency channels. The complaint alleges funds deposited through all three channels were used for expenses unrelated to trading, to pay Safranko and others, and to make Ponzi-style payments to earlier customers using newer deposits.
• Safranko’s own admission: In a November 2022 video conference, Safranko stated that “transfers coming in” can be used to “exit people out with that deposit.” In an August 2022 call he described TD doing “ledger transactions” and using new customer deposits to pay withdrawal requests from different customers rather than moving funds from a trading pool.

The MLM Machine: How Paid Sponsors Multiplied the Fraud

TD did not rely solely on its own website and social media to find customers. It built a commission-based referral network that functioned, in the CFTC’s own words, “akin to a multi-level marketing scheme.” Here is how each major spoke of that network operated.

The TD Defendants (Safranko and Negus-Romvari)

• Ted Safranko co-founded TD in 2017, ran it as CEO and director, and was, upon information and belief, personally responsible for manually trading funds in the TD Pool. He was known on social media as “Uncle Ted” and moderated a Telegram community of more than 3,800 TD customers, using it to manage the narrative around withdrawal delays.
• David Negus-Romvari co-founded TD, served as director, and personally attended sponsor recruitment meetings in Miami in March 2022. Both men later took steps to conceal their roles on paper, with Safranko “resigning” as director in January 2020 on paper while continuing to identify himself as CEO in emails and customer meetings through 2023.
• Both Safranko and Negus-Romvari were separately sued by the CFTC on January 31, 2023, in the Southern District of Texas for making false statements to the National Futures Association. A default judgment was entered against them on September 5, 2023.
• TD paid sponsors commissions of up to 60% of customers’ reported trading profits to funnel new money into the TD Pool. This created a powerful financial incentive for sponsors to keep recruiting regardless of what they knew or suspected about the underlying operation.

The Algo Defendants ($39 Million, 242 Customers)

• Algo Capital LLC and Algo FX Capital Advisor LLC (now Quant5 Advisor, LLC) were Florida-based entities controlled by Robert Collazo Jr. (President) and Juan Herman (Vice President). John Fortini served as CFO/Portfolio Management and Stephen Likos was a sales representative paid on commission.
• Algo began using TD as a brokerage in 2019. In October 2021, after suffering large trading losses in its own proprietary strategy, Algo quietly stopped using its own algorithm entirely and began routing all customer funds to the TD Pool. It told customers none of this. Customers were told throughout that Algo’s own algorithm was trading their money.
• Algo’s written customer agreements described a proprietary “algorithmic trading software” or a “gold intra-day trading strategy.” A new “Rider” agreement introduced in October 2021 deliberately omitted any mention of TD, Safranko, or the fact that Algo no longer controlled or executed the trades.
• The Algo Defendants directed customers to deposit funds directly into bank accounts owned and controlled by Collazo and Herman. The complaint alleges those funds were never forwarded to TD for trading. Instead, Algo retained the funds, made Ponzi-style payments, and paid themselves, while maintaining a ledger fiction that customer accounts at TD were funded.

Michael Shannon Sims

• Sims was an approved Principal of a registered CPO/CTA entity from January 2020 to April 2023. The CFTC sued him separately on January 31, 2023, for aiding and abetting fraud in another case; that case was ongoing at the time of this complaint’s filing.
• Sims misrepresented the ownership and operation of the trading business to prospective customers, made false claims about profit and risk, and made misrepresentations about customers’ ability to withdraw funds. The complaint also alleges Sims was warned about TD and knew or should have known TD was manipulating trade data.
• The complaint further alleges Sims took active steps to conceal the fraud, including concealing the purpose of TD wires and the nationalities of customers, actions that would have helped obscure the true destination of customer money and the actual U.S. customer base from scrutiny.

Holton Buggs Jr.

• Buggs, a Houston, Texas resident, was never registered with the CFTC in any capacity. He solicited customers for the TD Pool and was paid commissions by TD on those customers. Safranko communicated directly with Buggs via telephone and messaging apps, participated in video and telephone conferences with Buggs’s potential customers, and on at least one occasion traveled with Buggs to Dubai in connection with TD business.
• Buggs made misrepresentations about potential profits and risk, misrepresented the trading operation, and made false statements about customers’ ability to withdraw funds. The complaint alleges Buggs ignored warnings that TD was manipulating trades and concealed the purpose of TD wires and the residency status of customers he recruited.
• The complaint alleges Buggs misappropriated customer funds by collecting commissions on purported trading profits that he knew or should have known did not exist.

The Centurion Defendants

• Centurion Capital Group Inc. was incorporated in Florida in March 2022. It was controlled by Alejandro Santiestaban (Alex Santi), who owned it through a Delaware holding company, and Gabriel Beltran, who owned it through a Florida holding company. Archie Rice, a Texas resident, solicited customers on Centurion’s behalf, including at least one in-person meeting in Florida.
• Centurion told customers it was operating a “hedge fund” with a verifiable historical performance record and misrepresented monthly gains of 15% for a “conservative” account as documented performance, when in fact those figures came from a link Negus-Romvari shared purporting to show TD’s algo results.
• Centurion commingled customer funds with its own operating funds and those of other entities it controlled, a direct violation of commodity pool rules requiring segregation of participant funds. It was never registered with the CFTC.
• Like the other sponsor defendants, Centurion ignored clear evidence that TD was manipulating trade data and failed to disclose TD’s CFTC RED List status to customers after July 14, 2022.

The Timeline: From Launch to Federal Complaint

The scheme ran for nearly five years before the CFTC filed suit. The gap between when red flags first appeared and when accountability arrived is the story.

Their Own Words: What the Court Documents Actually Say

The following are verbatim quotes drawn directly from the federal complaint filed by the CFTC (Case 1:24-cv-23745). These are not paraphrases or interpretations. They are the words of the defendants, captured in texts, emails, and recorded calls, and entered into a federal court record.

Safranko Admits the Ponzi Structure — In His Own Voice

“Transfers coming in can be used to exit people out with that deposit.”

— Ted Safranko, in a video conference, approximately November 2022 (CFTC Complaint ¶81)

• This quote establishes that Safranko himself described, in plain language, using incoming customer deposits to pay outgoing withdrawal requests for different customers. That is the operational definition of a Ponzi payment structure.
• This statement was made during the same period when TD was publicly assuring customers that their funds were safe and withdrawals were merely delayed by compliance processes.

“Instead of moving money from our liquidity pool, we just do a simple accounting” by using new customer deposits to pay withdraw[al] requests for different customers.

— Ted Safranko, in a call with customers, approximately August 2022 (CFTC Complaint ¶81)

• This is the second documented instance in the complaint of Safranko describing Ponzi-style mechanics to actual customers, framing it as routine “accounting” rather than as the misappropriation the CFTC alleges it is.
• The phrase “simple accounting” is particularly telling: it describes a scheme that has no actual trading pool backing customer accounts, only a ledger that gets balanced by routing new investor money to pay out old investor requests.

Algo’s Internal Texts: They Knew the Trades Were Fake

Fortini: “If u ever worked for bookie u know u can lose games cuz ur making the money off everyone. Else with ur percent / I feel like Ted [Safranko] doing that / But at some point losses can outdo his gains.”
Likos: “Because u think he covered up old losses.”
Fortini: “Yea / or sure. In past the trades he closed stayed on the trade history he just deleted them.”

— Text exchange between John Fortini and Stephen Likos, October 12, 2022 (CFTC Complaint ¶135)

• This exchange proves that Algo’s own CFO and top salesman believed Safranko was deleting real trading losses from customer account histories as of October 12, 2022, the same period Algo was still actively soliciting new customers and assuring existing ones that their funds were safe.
• Fortini’s bookmaking analogy shows these individuals understood the scheme not as a technical glitch but as a deliberate manipulation of outcomes for profit.

Likos: “How the fuck would he take profit at 1657 if it never reached there? Or am I reading something wrong.”
Fortini: “Not sure but maybe our charts not same.”
Likos: “I mean . . . no where [sic] ever close lol.”
Fortini: “Yea 1659.”

— Text exchange between Likos and Fortini, October 17, 2022 (CFTC Complaint ¶135)

• This exchange documents Algo personnel observing, in real time, that trades in the TD Pool were being recorded at prices the gold market never actually reached on that day. This is direct evidence of fabricated trade records, not “slippage” or “system errors.”
• Despite documenting this specific anomaly in writing on October 17, 2022, neither Fortini nor Likos reported it to customers or stopped soliciting new investments.

Fortini: “He obviously can change orders.”
Likos: [Safranko] “deleted [a] bunch of trades completely.”
[Likos asked how to explain this to Algo’s customers.]
Fortini: “No idea . . . I want to get money out.”

— Text exchange between Fortini and Likos, December 13, 2022 (CFTC Complaint ¶136)

• Fortini’s final line, “I want to get money out,” directly answers why the Algo Defendants continued to operate despite knowing the trades were manipulated. The priority was personal financial extraction, not customer protection.
• This exchange eliminates any plausible claim of ignorance. Fortini and Likos knew the trading data was fabricated, had no explanation to offer customers, and chose to continue the scheme for personal gain.

Algo’s Sales Tactics, In Plain Sight

“We’ll get him hooked like hookers on meth . . . I’ll have them put a mil in by month 3. Watch.”

— Stephen Likos, Algo Capital’s top salesperson, describing his strategy for a prospective customer (CFTC Complaint ¶131)

• This quote, entered verbatim into a federal complaint, describes the recruitment strategy not as financial advising but as predatory manipulation. The tactic relied on showing customers nearly always-positive trading results, which the complaint alleges were fabricated, to build dependency and escalate investment levels.
• Likos received commissions based on the customers he recruited and the money he brought in. His financial incentive was direct and personal.

Safranko to Algo: The Algorithm Lie Acknowledged

“[I] wish you guys had told them you weren[‘]t trading cause that is causing a lot of headache [sic]. [E]veryone is asking why Algo cap claimed they had algos then ‘ted’ was trading[.] [T]hat is the big issue[.]”

— Ted Safranko, in a message to Herman and Fortini, January 29, 2023 (CFTC Complaint ¶110)

• Safranko here directly acknowledges that Algo Capital was falsely telling customers it was trading with its own algorithm when Safranko, not any Algo algorithm, was responsible for trading. This is the scheme’s architects confirming the central misrepresentation to customers.
• The framing as a “headache” rather than a fraud underscores how normalized the deception had become among the defendants.

Likos Assures a Customer While Telling His Colleague the Opposite

“I can’t apologize enough for this but there’s no fear about the safety of your money.”
[Meanwhile, in a separate internal message the same period:]
“We’re fucked.”

— Stephen Likos, November 15, 2022, to a customer (first quote) and to Fortini (second quote) (CFTC Complaint ¶125)

• The simultaneity of these two statements is the clearest single illustration in the complaint of deliberate fraud: a direct, knowing false assurance to a customer about the safety of their funds, made at the same time as an honest private admission that the situation was unsalvageable.
• This also establishes that customer-facing communications were not the result of optimism or poor information. Likos knew the truth and chose to say the opposite.

Algo Compares Safranko to a Prior Ponzi Schemer

The Algo Defendants parroted [TD’s] statements from TD and Safranko despite acknowledging among themselves that there was “zero proof backing” anything Safranko said and comparing Safranko to another Ponzi-schemer who “held clients off for 2 years” with similar unsubstantiated excuses.

— CFTC Complaint ¶127 (paraphrasing Algo internal communications)

• Algo’s internal communications show they were not passively misled by TD. They compared Safranko to a known Ponzi operator, acknowledged they had no factual basis for the withdrawal timeline promises they were giving customers, and continued forwarding those promises anyway.
• Despite this private assessment, the Algo Defendants continued accepting new deposits and soliciting new customers without disclosing any of this to the people whose money they held.

Societal Impact: Who Gets Hurt When Financial Fraud Goes Unregistered and Unaccountable

Public Health: The Psychological and Physical Cost of Financial Betrayal

Financial fraud of this scale does not stay on a balance sheet. Research and lived experience consistently document that victims of investment fraud suffer cascading health consequences that regulatory filings cannot capture.

• The complaint describes customers who submitted withdrawal requests in August 2022 and were still unable to access their funds more than two years later. That duration of financial limbo, not knowing if money that represented savings, retirement, or family security will ever return, is associated with chronic stress, anxiety disorders, and depression in the financial trauma research literature.
• At least some customers were recruited through personal relationships, community networks, MLM social structures, and church affiliations. When those relationships turned out to be the transmission vector for fraud, the psychological damage extends to a loss of trust in community, not just in financial institutions.
• Victims who deposited funds via cryptocurrency have no FDIC protection, no chargeback rights, and no recourse outside of civil litigation. The complaint notes those victims are not even fully accounted for in the $283 million figure, meaning the true total loss may be higher and the most vulnerable may be the least protected.
• The use of MLM and social media recruitment structures meant the scheme spread through networks of trust. When schemes like this collapse, the social damage ripples outward: recruiters who genuinely believed in the product face community blame; families who referred family members lose those relationships along with their money.

Economic Inequality: How This Scheme Was Designed to Exploit Aspiration

The targeting of MLM networks, social media influencers, and community-based recruiters is not incidental to this scheme. It is central to how the scheme reached the people it reached.

• MLM networks disproportionately recruit people who have been excluded from traditional wealth-building channels. Offering “60% of trading profits” as a commission structure to people with existing MLM downlines is a direct pitch to communities that have been marketed to as paths to financial independence while being systematically excluded from legitimate investment infrastructure.
• The commission structure, paying sponsors up to 60% of customers’ reported (and allegedly fabricated) trading profits, created a powerful incentive for sponsors to recruit aggressively and to minimize any doubts they or their customers expressed. The people at the bottom of this network had the least information and the most financial exposure.
• The complaint describes at least 2,046 customers depositing a minimum of $283 million. That averages approximately $138,000 per customer. For many of these individuals, that sum represents not discretionary investment capital but years of savings, retirement funds, or borrowings.
• TD directed U.S. customers to list “CRYPTO” as their country of origin precisely to circumvent CFTC jurisdiction and registration requirements. This regulatory evasion deprived U.S. customers of protections that exist specifically because ordinary investors cannot independently verify whether a foreign broker is legitimate. The people targeted by this scheme were, by design, people who could not easily verify what was happening to their money.
• Algo Capital held customer funds in accounts controlled by Collazo and Herman and never forwarded them to TD for trading, yet continued collecting fees and making Ponzi-style payments. This means some customers’ money never left Florida even as their account statements showed “trades” occurring in an offshore pool. The distance between the paper fiction and the financial reality was invisible to the people it was designed to exploit.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric: Putting the Numbers in Human Terms

What Now? Accountability, Watchlists, and Resistance

The CFTC’s complaint names specific individuals and entities. Holding them accountable requires pressure on regulators, awareness in communities targeted by these schemes, and active resistance to the conditions that allow MLM-style fraud to thrive in the first place.

Named Defendants: Corporate Roles and Entities

• Traders Domain FX Ltd. / The Traders Domain — offshore CPO, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Co-founders: Ted Safranko (CEO/Director) and David Negus-Romvari (Director). Neither ever registered with the CFTC.
• Ares Global Ltd. / Trubluefx — successor entity, incorporated St. Lucia June 2023. Continues to hold customer accounts. Has never been registered with the CFTC.
• Algo Capital LLC / Algo FX Capital Advisor LLC (now Quant5 Advisor, LLC) — Florida entities. Controlling persons: Robert Collazo Jr. (President) and Juan Herman (Vice President). Officers: John Fortini, Stephen Likos. Collectively solicited $39M from 242 customers.
• Michael Shannon Sims — Sunny Isles Beach, FL. Subject of a separate ongoing CFTC enforcement action filed January 31, 2023.
• Holton Buggs Jr. — Houston, TX. Never registered with the CFTC. Traveled with Safranko to Dubai in connection with TD business.
• Centurion Capital Group Inc. — Hialeah Gardens, FL. Controlling persons: Alejandro Santiestaban (Alex Santi) and Gabriel Beltran, operating through Delaware and Florida holding companies respectively. Texas-based representative: Archie Rice.

Regulatory Watchlist: Bodies With Jurisdiction and Complaint Channels

• CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) — primary regulator. The RED List at cftc.gov/investors flags unregistered offshore entities. Before giving money to any forex or commodity trading company, check this list. File tips at cftc.gov/complaint.
• NFA (National Futures Association) — nfa.futures.org. Search any entity or individual claiming to trade futures, forex, or commodities for registration status before investing. Safranko’s SAEG Capital default judgment is in the NFA public record.
• SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) — investor.gov/check-your-investment-professional. For any scheme that claims to be a “hedge fund” or investment vehicle, check SEC registration. Centurion marketed itself as a hedge fund while never registering.
• FTC (Federal Trade Commission) — ftc.gov/complaint. MLM-adjacent recruitment tactics and income opportunity misrepresentations fall within FTC jurisdiction. The commission structure used by TD is textbook pyramid-adjacent solicitation.
• CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) — consumerfinance.gov/complaint. For payment processor and fintech-adjacent fraud, especially where credit cards, ACH, or digital payment platforms were used to move customer funds to unregistered entities.
• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) — ic3.gov. For commodity and investment fraud involving internet-based solicitation, wire transfers, and cryptocurrency. IC3 referrals feed directly into federal financial crimes task forces.

Grassroots Resistance and Mutual Aid

• If you or someone you know lost money to TD, Algo Capital, Trubluefx, Centurion, or any named defendant: Document everything. Screenshots of account statements, the trading app, withdrawal requests, and all communications with sponsors are evidence. Contact the CFTC directly at cftc.gov/complaint and request victim status in this action. Restitution is one of the forms of relief the CFTC is seeking.
• Talk to your community about how these schemes spread. TD’s network was built through existing trust relationships: MLM downlines, social media followings, and personal referrals. The people who recruited you were often also victims. Rebuilding community trust means naming the structural conditions, not just the individual bad actors.
• Pressure your local elected representatives to strengthen CFTC and NFA funding and enforcement capacity against offshore entities. The structural problem this case exposes is that registration requirements exist but are difficult to enforce when entities incorporate in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and route customer funds through anonymous third-party accounts. That enforcement gap requires legislative attention, not just individual vigilance.
• For community-based investor protection: Organizations like the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) coordinate state-level investor protection efforts and maintain resources specifically targeting affinity fraud, the type of fraud that spreads through communities of shared identity or shared trust, which describes the structure of this scheme precisely.