he Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas entered a consent order imposing permanent injunctive relief, civil monetary penalty, restitution, and equitable relief against Marcus Todd Brisco of Hawaii for his fraudulent solicitation and misappropriation of funds in connection with two commodity pools.
The consent order requires Brisco to pay a $350,000 civil monetary penalty and $1.65 million restitution to victims of his fraudulent scheme. The order also imposes permanent trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction prohibiting Brisco from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations, as charged.
The consent order stems from a CFTC complaint filed against eight defendants in January 2023. The court previously entered judgments or consent orders against the other defendants, and this consent order against Brisco resolves this action against all defendants.
The consent order finds Brisco operated two fraudulent commodity pools and solicited pool participants to deposit funds for trading leveraged or margined retail forex or retail commodity transactions but did not direct any of the funds to be traded as promised.
From October 2020 to May 2022, Brisco operated his first commodity pool through his company Yas Castellum LLC (Yas 1). Brisco fraudulently solicited funds from at least 43 pool participants, who deposited more than $470,700 in the commodity pool. Rather than sending the funds to be traded, Brisco directed the funds to bank accounts controlled by another defendant, Tin Tran, and to a third-party entity.
In March 2022, the National Futures Association initiated an examination of Yas 1 and informed Brisco of serious concerns about his lack of oversight and control of investor funds. After Brisco repaid Yas 1’s pool participants, he told the NFA he was ceasing operations and leaving the financial services industry.
However, one month later Brisco launched his second commodity pool through a new company, Yas Castellum Financial LLC (Yas 2), which he failed to register with the CFTC as required. Brisco fraudulently solicited funds from at least 66 pool participants who deposited over $1.9 million to participate in the Yas 2 commodity pool. Brisco misappropriated the participant funds by paying himself nonexistent trading profits and directing funds to another bank account controlled by Tran. In total, Brisco failed to repay more than $1.6 million to Yas 2’s pool participants.
