CFTC Charges Three Bridges Trading Fund and Donald Wray Rodgers Over $2M Commodity Pool Fraud

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a civil enforcement action against Tennessee corporation Three Bridges Trading Fund, LLC, along with its owner, president, and manager, Donald Wray Rodgers of Collierville, Tennessee. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, the complaint alleges that the defendants orchestrated a fraudulent commodity pool scheme that took in at least $2 million from approximately 50 pool participants. According to the CFTC, between January 2022 and November 2022, Rodgers solicited participants by falsely presenting Three Bridges as a successful commodity pool and misrepresenting his trading history. Pool participants were led to believe their funds would be used to trade futures contracts on their behalf. Instead of managing the capital as promised, the defendants misappropriated significant portions of the funds. The CFTC alleges that Rodgers commingled pool assets with non-pool funds and instructed participants to send money directly to his personal account. Rodgers also transferred funds from the Three Bridges corporate bank account to his personal trading account, executing trades under his own name while failing to maintain Three Bridges as a separate legal entity. When trading performance failed to yield profits, the defendants concealed the fraud by providing fabricated documents to investors. These included fake account statements designed to convince participants that the fund was solvent, as well as false trade confirmations used to wrongfully explain away losses. The defendants also engaged in Ponzi-style payouts, using money from new participants to pay off earlier investors. The complaint further details regulatory violations, stating that Three Bridges acted as an unregistered Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) and Rodgers acted as an unregistered Associated Person (AP) of the CPO. The CFTC is pursuing restitution for defrauded investors, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, permanent trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.