The Commodity Futures Trading Commission just filed a civil complaint against a North Carolina man and his firm, alleging they ran a nearly four-year fraud scheme that siphoned over $14 million from investors. The strategy supposedly involved trading equity index futures, options, and crypto assets. The reality, according to the CFTC, involved significant trading losses, fabricated reports, and paying old investors with new investors’ money.
Trevor L. Vernon and his company, Argent Capital Management LLC, are the defendants. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
The alleged scheme
According to the CFTC’s complaint, Vernon and ACM operated as a commodity pool, collecting funds from at least 60 participants between March 2022 and February 2026. That’s nearly four years of allegedly telling investors their money was growing when it was actually shrinking.
Vernon allegedly made false claims about his trading success and distributed fabricated performance reports that painted a rosy picture of the pool’s profitability. The CFTC alleges the operation functioned as a Ponzi-like scheme, using funds from newer investors to pay returns to earlier participants.
