On March 26, the CFTC posted a Notice of Covered Action for a $2.3 million enforcement action taken against a purported digital asset platform for an alleged online romance scam, signaling that the Commissions is accepting whistleblower award claims for the case.

Key Takeaways:

• A court judgement found Debiex liable for misappropriating over $2 million in customers’ funds in an online romance fraud scheme
• Online romance fraud schemes, including “pig butchering,” are a focus of the CFTC
• Qualified CFTC whistleblowers are eligible to receive awards of 10-30% of the funds collected in connection with their disclosure

On March 26, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) posted a Notice of Covered Action (NCA) for a $2.3 million enforcement action taken against a purported digital asset platform for an alleged online romance scam. The NCA signals that the Commission is now accepting whistleblower award claims for the case.

Debiex Pig Butchering Case

The CFTC announced on March 21 that the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona issued a default judgment against Debiex in response to the CFTC’s enforcement action. The judgement finds Debiex liable for misappropriating over $2 million in customers’ funds.

According to the CFTC, “Debiex’s unidentified officers and/or managers cultivated friendly or romantic relationships with potential customers by communicating falsehoods to gain trust, and then solicited them to open and fund trading accounts with Debiex.”

“Unbeknownst to the customers, and as alleged, the Debiex websites merely mimicked the features of a legitimate live trading platform and the ‘trading accounts’ depicted on the websites were a complete ruse,” the CFTC further claims. “No actual digital asset trading took place on the customers’ behalf.”

The type of online romance scam carried out by Debiex is known as “Sha Zhu Pan” or “Pig Butchering.”

“As the graphic name suggests, these schemes liken the practice of soliciting consumers to participate in a fraudulent investment opportunity to ‘fattening up’ an unsuspecting pig prior to slaughtering it,” CFTC Commissioner Kristin N. Johnson explained in a January statement announcing the charges against Debiex.

The court order bans Debiex from trading in any CFTC regulated markets or registering with the CFTC and requires Debiex to pay a $221,466 civil monetary penalty and over $2.2 million in restitution.

“This judgment demonstrates the CFTC’s ongoing commitment to protecting U.S. citizens from online scams,” said Director of Enforcement Brian Young.

Notice of Covered Action and CFTC Whistleblower Program

The Notice of Covered Action posted by the CFTC for this enforcement action signals that individuals have 90 days to file a whistleblower award claim for the case.

Under the CFTC Whistleblower Program, qualified whistleblowers, individuals who voluntarily provide original information which leads to a successful enforcement action, are eligible to receive monetary awards of 10-30% of the funds collected in the action.

In 2023, the CFTC Whistleblower Office published a whistleblower alert on the ability to anonymously blow the whistle on romance investment frauds and qualify for awards and protections.

“Under the Whistleblower Program of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), individuals may become eligible for both financial awards and certain protections by assisting the CFTC with identifying perpetrators and facilitators of romance investment frauds under the CFTC’s jurisdiction, such as solicitations related to digital assets, precious metals, and/or over-the-counter foreign currency exchange (forex) trading,” the alert reads.

Since issuing its first award in 2014, the CFTC Whistleblower Program has awarded nearly $390 million to qualified whistleblowers. In the 2023 Fiscal Year, the CFTC received a record 1,744 whistleblower tips and issued 12 award orders, the most it has granted in a single year.