Michael Shannon Sims, aka Mike Sims, has settled SAEG Ponzi charges with the CFTC for $250,000.

The CFTC filed suit against Sims in January 2023 over his participation in the collapsed SAEG Ponzi scheme.

As alleged by the CFTC, Sims facilitated money laundering of SAEG Ponzi victim funds.

As part of his settlement, Sims consented to an August 22nd court order that finds

from at least October 2020 to May 2022, at the direction and with the assistance of Sims … engaged in a scheme to fraudulently solicit prospective pool participants (“Pool Participants”) to deposit funds for the ostensible purpose of participating in
a commodity pool.

Rather than directing any Pool Participant funds to a firm that trades forex or XAUUSD or maintaining funds in an account in the name of the commodity pool, the funds were instead transferred to bank accounts controlled by Defendant C and another firm (“Purported Trading Firm 1”).

Sims helped facilitate this scheme by, among other things, directing Defendant B about where and how to wire funds and instructing Defendant B to disguise the transfers so the scheme would not be discovered.

Sims did so with knowledge that Pool Participant funds were intended to be used to trade leveraged or margined retail foreign currency exchange (“retail forex”) or leveraged or margined gold-dollar pair (“XAUUSD”) retail commodity transactions.

Sims also knew or should have known and that the entities to which he directed Entity A to send the funds would not send funds to any trading firm.

Additionally, Sims provided Defendant B with confidential and proprietary information about his hedge fund, Purported Trading Firm 2, that was used by Defendant B to mislead Pool Participants into thinking that Purported Trading Firm 2 was
trading Pool funds.

The order grants the CFTC a permanent injunction against Sims, prohibiting further acts of commodities fraud. A $250,000 civil monetary penalty (CMP) was also ordered.

Upon full satisfaction of the Defendant’s CMP Obligation, satisfaction of monetary sanctions will be entered as to Defendant.

Upon payment of the CMP, the previously ordered asset freeze on Sims will be lifted.

The SAEG series of Ponzi schemes were part of The Traders Domain, a mega-Ponzi run by Ted Safranko (right).

Safranko was charged by the CFTC but has gone into hiding.

BehindMLM’s interest in these interconnect schemes pertains to OmegaPro, a billion dollar MLM crypto Ponzi that funnelled into The Traders Domain.

Records reveal Sims stole over $76 million through The Traders Domain (and another $96 million through Algo Capital and an unknown amount through OmegaPro).

Turkish authorities have pegged OmegaPro victim losses at $4 billion. Based on withdrawals by its top net-winners, The Traders Domain took in an estimated $3.3 billion.

As of yet no The Traders Domain or OmegaPro specific charges have been filed in the US. As noted, Ted Safranko has gone into hiding.

OmegaPro co-founder Andreas Szakacs was arrested in Turkey back in July. The scope of the Turkish investigation into OmegaPro, and by extension The Traders Domain, has not been made public.

Whether US authorities file charges in relation to OmegaPro and The Traders Domain remains to be seen.