On Friday, September 25, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that it had filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida against Cash FX Group S.A. and its chief executive, Huascar Jose Lopez Castillo of Brazil, along with The Conversion Pros, Inc. and its CEO, Ronald Pope of Oregon, and Florida resident Justin Halladay.
The agency alleges the defendants ran a multilevel marketing Ponzi scheme tied to cryptocurrency, raising more than $950 million from investors, including people in the United States, under the guise of trading retail foreign currency contracts through a pooled investment vehicle.
According to the complaint, the defendants told investors their money was being managed by expert traders using proprietary algorithms and artificial intelligence, and dangled the prospect of weekly returns as high as 15 percent.
The CFTC contends those claims were false. Regulators say Cash FX conducted little actual forex trading and instead funneled most participant funds toward paying purported “profits” to earlier investors, while directing millions of dollars to the individual defendants.
The company allegedly issued fabricated account statements to sustain the appearance of profitable trading. Investors are said to have lost at least $406 million as a result.
David I. Miller, the CFTC’s Director of Enforcement, said the case underscores the agency’s focus on rooting out fraud affecting the public.
Through the lawsuit, the CFTC is seeking restitution for victims, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, bans from trading and registering with the agency, and a permanent injunction barring further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.
Source: CFTC
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