CFTC v. Cartu et al. (rigged binary options execution, 2020)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. CFTC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

Machine-extracted, pending human review. The structured fields on this page were parsed automatically from the regulator's own release, linked below. Read the primary document before relying on any figure here, and tell us if something is wrong.

In 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed an action against six individuals and four companies operating the BeeOptions, Glenridge Capital, Rumelia Capital and Blue Moon binary options brands, alleging conduct this library classifies as rigged binary options execution. The complaint alleges the scheme received over $165 million and that some trade results were manipulated to force customer losses.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

$165m

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced this matter on September 2, 2020 as release 8231-20, bringing a civil case in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against a group of six individuals and four companies. Named are David Cartu, Jonathan Cartu, Joshua Cartu, Leeav Peretz, Nati Peretz and Ryan Masten, together with BareIt Media LLC d/b/a SignalPush, All Out Marketing Limited, Blue Moon Investments, Ltd. and Orlando Union Inc.

Over nearly five years ending in April 2018, the three Cartu brothers are alleged to have run a retail binary-options operation under the BeeOptions, Glenridge Capital and Rumelia Capital names, staffed by call centers based mainly in Israel that pursued U.S. customers with promises of 60-to-85-percent returns while brokers lied about their credentials, pay, whereabouts and even their own names. What sets this complaint apart from an ordinary boiler-room pitch is what allegedly happened after a customer's money arrived: all of these brands ran on one shared internet platform, built and run by the Cartu brothers with Masten, and the complaint alleges that platform's owners actively steered the outcome of some customer positions toward a loss for their own benefit.

This library tags the matter as rigged binary options execution on the strength of that specific allegation: the platform did not merely misrepresent the odds, but controlled the outcome of transactions it operated.

A further allegation concerns the money itself: more than $165 million in card payments is alleged to have moved through an Irish entity, Greymountain Management Limited, that the Cartu brothers also controlled, while Masten's company SignalPush is alleged to have supplied trading signals and automated execution to customers without the registration the CFTC requires for that activity.

The status of this record is filed. This is an allegation the CFTC intends to prove, not an established fact, and the language above reflects that.

The release credits assistance from the Ontario Securities Commission, which had already brought its own proceeding against the Cartu brothers on behalf of more than 700 Ontario residents, and from regulators in Australia, Belize, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Malta, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Rigged binary options execution — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2020-09-02 CFTC civil enforcement action filed

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• CFTC release 8231-20

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 29, 2026. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.