Ted Safranko and the $283 Million Traders Domain Fraud

Ted Safranko is the Canadian co-founder of Traders Domain FX Ltd., an offshore forex brokerage that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has accused of running a $283 million Ponzi scheme. The CFTC sued him and fifteen other defendants in federal court in Florida in September 2024, a judge froze their assets, and a court-appointed receiver is now trying to recover money for more than 2,000 defrauded customers. The Ted Safranko and Traders Domain fraud case remains an active civil enforcement action, with allowed investor claims topping $127 million against a recovery pool of only a few million dollars.¹

Who Is Ted Safranko

Fredirick Teddy Joseph Safranko, known as Ted Safranko or “Uncle Ted,” is a resident of Ontario or British Columbia, Canada. He co-founded Traders Domain FX Ltd. in 2017 with David William Negus-Romvari. The company was registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as an international business company but operated from Canada. Safranko served as its director and CEO and also acted as a “master trader” whose trades customers could automatically copy through the platform’s PAMM accounts and copy-trading services.²

Safranko had already been sanctioned by the CFTC once before. In January 2023, the agency sued him and SAEG Capital General Management LP, a Utah-based firm where he was an approved Principal, in the Southern District of Texas for making false statements to the National Futures Association. A default judgment entered in September 2023 imposed a permanent injunction, trading and registration bans, and a civil monetary penalty. Outside of his Principal role at SAEG, Safranko had never been registered with the CFTC in any capacity.³

How Traders Domain Allegedly Worked

Traders Domain launched its retail brokerage site on December 31, 2017, under the slogan “Built by Traders for Traders.” It advertised segregated client accounts, fast withdrawals and deposits, and leverage up to 500-to-1. The returns it marketed were extraordinary: more than 5,000 percent in 2021 and 7,000 percent in 2022, according to the CFTC complaint.²

Publicly, Traders Domain claimed it did not solicit clients and only operated where forex trading was approved. In practice, the CFTC says, it deliberately recruited most of its customers from the United States through what the agency describes as a “hub and spoke” structure resembling multi-level marketing. Traders Domain was the hub. Third-party “sponsors” were the spokes, funneling U.S. investors into the “TD Pool” in exchange for a cut of purported trading profits that sometimes ran as high as 60 percent.²

The sponsor groups named in the lawsuit include Algo Capital LLC and related entities run by Robert Collazo Jr. and Juan Herman out of Florida, and Centurion Capital Group Inc., run by Alejandro Santiestaban, Gabriel Beltran, and Archie Rice. Individual sponsors included Michael Shannon Sims and Holton Buggs Jr., a veteran of the network marketing industry who had previously served as Chief Visionary Officer of the MLM company ORGANO. According to the CFTC, Buggs helped recruit investors by connecting them directly with Safranko through phone and video calls.¹

What the CFTC Alleges

The CFTC filed its complaint on September 30, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, assigned to Judge Roy K. Altman. The agency alleges that beginning at least in November 2019, Safranko, Negus-Romvari, and their sponsors solicited funds for leveraged retail commodity transactions in gold-to-U.S.-dollar pairs (XAU/USD) while running a fraudulent operation.¹

The core allegations in the complaint:

Traders Domain falsely claimed to be a “registered and licensed brokerage firm” and made material misrepresentations through its website, social media, email, text, and in-person meetings.
At least some customer deposits were never used for trading. The operation functioned as a Ponzi scheme, with new money sustaining the enterprise.
Trading records were fabricated, and the company charged commissions on purported profits that never existed.
When customers hit severe withdrawal delays in late 2022, the defendants offered conflicting excuses, falsely assured customers their money was safe, and kept soliciting new deposits for more than six months.

More than 2,000 customers deposited at least $283 million into the scheme, according to the agency.¹

In June 2023, as the withdrawal crisis deepened, Traders Domain announced it had been “acquired” by Trubluefx, formally Ares Global Ltd., a Saint Lucia company that shared the same St. Vincent and the Grenadines address as Traders Domain. The CFTC calls the acquisition a sham designed to keep customers calm and new money coming in. Trubluefx is named as a defendant and described in the complaint as Traders Domain’s “successor.”² The complaint charges various combinations of defendants with fraud, failure to register as commodity pool operators and commodity trading advisors, and related violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.³

The Asset Freeze and Receivership

On October 2, 2024, before the complaint was even unsealed, Judge Altman granted the CFTC’s request for an emergency statutory restraining order. The order froze all defendants’ assets and appointed Kelly M. Crawford as temporary receiver. The case became public on October 11, 2024.⁴

The receivership covers all sixteen defendants. Crawford has taken possession of records, bank accounts, real estate, vehicles, jewelry, firearms, and cryptocurrency tied to the defendants, assisted by claims administrator Stretto, Inc., which runs the claims portal and communicates with investors.⁵

Safranko, Negus-Romvari, and several other defendants never responded to the lawsuit. The court authorized alternative service in November 2024, and in January 2025 the CFTC moved for a clerk’s entry of default against Safranko, Negus-Romvari, Traders Domain, Ares Global (Trubluefx), the Algo entities, Juan Herman, and Centurion Capital Group. A consent order for preliminary injunction against Negus-Romvari was entered later that month.⁴

What Investors Can Expect

Defrauded customers had until July 28, 2025 to file a proof of claim through tradersdomainreceivership.com. Claimants who had already filed in a predecessor Florida state-court proceeding involving Algo Capital did not need to refile, because their records were transferred over automatically.⁶

The gap between what was lost and what is recoverable is wide. By the time the receiver filed her fifth report in October 2025, submitted claims totaled more than $800 million, though many were inflated because claimants were seeking the return of fictitious “earnings” rather than their actual deposits. After review, the receiver recommended allowed claims of more than $127 million.⁵ Against that, the receivership held about $4.18 million in cash as of October 27, 2025, plus roughly $4 million in additional assets (vehicles, jewelry, firearms, and real estate) recovered the prior quarter.⁷

The court set a schedule for adjudicating the claims: an initial claims report due February 3, 2026, claimant objections by March 5, and the receiver’s submission of unresolved objections by April 24, 2026. As of mid-2026 the receiver was still working through those objections and continued liquidating defendants’ assets, including real property in Miami Lakes, Florida, and Houston, Texas.⁸ The receiver has said it is too early to estimate how much, if anything, investors will ultimately recover.⁵

Where Safranko Stands Now

The CFTC is seeking full restitution, disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, permanent trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction against Safranko and the other defendants.⁶ The Ontario Securities Commission assisted with the investigation, along with regulators in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Estonia, and Vanuatu.¹

Safranko himself appears to have stayed outside the reach of ordinary U.S. court process. The court authorized alternative service, and a motion for default has been filed against him, but no public reports indicate he has been arrested or faces criminal charges. This is a civil enforcement action, and the allegations have not been proven at trial.

1
CFTC. CFTC Press Release 8997-24
2
CFTC. CFTC Complaint, Traders Domain FX Ltd.
3
CFTC. Traders Domain FX Complaint
4
CFTC. CFTC Enforcement Service, Traders Domain FX Ltd.
5
Traders Domain Receivership. Traders Domain Receivership
6
CFTC. CFTC Press Release 9083-25
7
Traders Domain Receivership. Fifth Report of the Receiver
8
CourtListener. CFTC v. Traders Domain FX Ltd. Docket, Page 3