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Market manipulation in foreign exchange

This library records 53 enforcement actions involving the foreign-exchange (FX) asset class, spanning 11 of its 60 manipulation techniques and 5 regulators (CFTC, SEC, FCA, OSC, ASIC), filed between 2013-02-06 and 2025-04-29. These are enforcement records, not a random sample of conduct: they reflect what regulators chose to investigate, charge and publish, not the full population of FX manipulation that actually occurred.

FX is not one of this site's six technique families on its own; FX-tagged records are drawn from whichever family the underlying conduct belongs to — chiefly benchmark and cross-market rigging (the FX fixing cases), order-book manipulation, and related-but-distinct charges such as Ponzi fraud and fraud against managed-account clients. The breakdown below groups those records by technique rather than by family.

Records by technique

Every technique on this site with at least one FX-tagged record, most-recorded first.

The technique mix

Which manipulation techniques appear most often in foreign-exchange enforcement recordsA horizontal bar chart of the 10 most-recorded manipulation techniques among the 53 enforcement records in this library tagged with the foreign-exchange (FX) asset class, ordered from most to fewest records: Ponzi schemes 12; Benchmark submission rigging 11; Price manipulation 11; FX fixing 9; Rigged binary options execution 5; Insider trading 3; Cash versus derivatives schemes 2; Wash trading 2; Rule 105 offering shorts 1; Spoofing 1.Ponzi schemes 12Benchmark submission rigging 11Price manipulation 11FX fixing 9Rigged binary options execution 5Insider trading 3Cash versus derivatives schemes 2Wash trading 2Rule 105 offering shorts 1Spoofing 1
Counts are of enforcement records in this library, not of underlying incidents.

Records by year

How the number of foreign-exchange manipulation enforcement records has changed by yearA column chart of enforcement records in this library tagged with the foreign-exchange (FX) asset class, one column per filing year from 2013 to 2025, each column labelled with its count: 2013 3; 2014 8; 2015 6; 2016 3; 2017 5; 2019 7; 2020 4; 2021 2; 2022 5; 2023 4; 2024 5; 2025 1. A year with no column had zero recorded filings. 0 3 5 8 32013 82014 62015 32016 52017 72019 42020 22021 52022 42023 52024 12025Records
Filing year is when the regulator announced the action, not when the conduct occurred.

24 of these 53 records carry a recorded civil penalty, totalling $3.4bn in nominal, uninflation-adjusted terms.

Recent foreign-exchange enforcement actions

Most recent FX-tagged enforcement actions
Action Agency Filed Technique Penalty Status
SEC v. Ramil Ventura Palafox (ponzi schemes, 2025) SEC 2025-04-29 Ponzi Schemes — filed
CFTC v. NOLA FX Capital Management, LLC, Meteor, LLC and Michael B. DePetrillo (ponzi schemes, 2024) CFTC 2024-10-28 Ponzi Schemes — filed
SEC v. Marathon Asset Management, LP (2024) SEC 2024-09-30 $1.5m settled
CFTC v. Dwight A. Foster (ponzi schemes, 2024) CFTC 2024-07-02 Ponzi Schemes $1.6m judgment
CFTC v. Darren Robinson (ponzi schemes, 2024) CFTC 2024-04-26 Ponzi Schemes $5.9m judgment
SEC v. Ismael Zarco Sanchez and 16 others (ponzi schemes, 2024) SEC 2024-03-14 Ponzi Schemes — filed
SEC v. Joseph Conlan (insider trading, 2023) SEC 2023-10-30 Insider Trading $73.6k settled
CFTC v. Darren Robinson and The QYU Holdings Inc. (ponzi schemes, 2023) CFTC 2023-09-28 Ponzi Schemes $5.9m judgment
OSC v. Nova Tech Ltd. and Cynthia Petion (2023) OSC 2023-08-25 — judgment
CFTC v. Dwight A. Foster and K.E.L. Enterprises, Inc. (ponzi schemes, 2023) CFTC 2023-07-06 Ponzi Schemes $1.6m settled
CFTC v. Glen Point Capital and Neil Phillips (price manipulation, 2022) CFTC 2022-12-15 Price Manipulation — filed
SEC v. Mauricio Chavez, Giorgio Benvenuto and CryptoFX, LLC (ponzi schemes, 2022) SEC 2022-10-03 Ponzi Schemes — filed
SEC v. Brijesh Goel and Akshay Niranjan (insider trading, 2022) SEC 2022-07-25 Insider Trading — settled
OSC v. Christopher Uitvlugt (ponzi schemes, 2022) OSC 2022-04-27 Ponzi Schemes — judgment
CFTC v. Abner Alejandro Tinoco and Kikit & Mess Investments, LLC (2022) CFTC 2022-03-29 — settled

Filter the full case library by asset class →

What's distinctive here

Within this library, FX-tagged records are spread across 11 techniques, led by Ponzi schemes, benchmark submission rigging, price manipulation: a mix of the large multi-bank benchmark and fixing matters and other schemes whose records mention currency markets, not one kind of conduct across the 53 records. CFTC brings the largest share of the FX-tagged records this library holds (26 of 53). This says nothing about how common FX manipulation is relative to other markets — only that the matters regulators have brought and published here cluster this way. The record is also incomplete by construction: more than half of this library's total case count is conduct this site classifies as related but distinct from manipulation itself , and FX is no exception to that caveat.