Ackerman Ponzi Hack

Michael Ackerman of Ohio is ordered to pay 54,000,000 $USD for a fraudulent digital asset trading scheme.

Michael Ackerman, a resident of Alliance, Ohio, has been hit with a default judgment by Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The judgment permanently bans Ackerman from trading in any CFTC-regulated markets and mandates him to pay 27,000,000 $USD in restitution to his victims and a further 27,000,000 $USD as a civil monetary penalty.

The judgment marks the resolution of the CFTC's enforcement case against Ackerman, which alleged that between August 2017 and December 2019, Ackerman operated a fraudulent scheme that lured and misappropriated funds under the guise of trading digital commodity assets. It was suggested that Ackerman's fraudulent misrepresentations led more than 150 individuals and entities to deposit at least 33,000,000 $USD with him. However, less than 10,000,000 $USD of this amount were used for actual trading, while the rest was appropriated for personal use and to sustain the fraudulent scheme.

To attract potential investors, Ackerman falsely claimed to be generating profitable trades and monthly returns of around 15%. The reality was, Ackerman was an unsuccessful trader and used false accounting statements, misleading newsletters, and fabricated screenshots to hide the truth.

In a related criminal case, Ackerman was sentenced in February 2022 to five years of probation with a year of home confinement, and he was later ordered in August 2022 to pay an additional 31,000,000 $USD in restitution.