Washington, D.C. — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach Division, on January 20, 2022, entered a restraining order to preserve records and freeze assets controlled by defendants Rajiv Patel, a/k/a Ravi Patel, a/k/a/ Raj Patel (Patel) and Bluprint LLC (Bluprint), both of Wellington, Florida. 

The court’s order arises out of the CFTC’s complaint filed on January 18, 2022. The complaint alleges that, from approximately June 2019 to the present, Bluprint and Patel, its owner and managing director, defrauded at least 16 pool participants of approximately $9.8 million through a commodity pool that purported to trade commodity futures and options.

Case Background

According to the complaint, the defendants misappropriated pool participants’ funds and used the funds to pay personal expenses and to trade, among other things, commodity futures and options in personal trading accounts. The trading was unprofitable and resulted in significant losses of the pool participants’ funds. The defendants, however, falsely reported to pool participants that their investments were accruing interest. The complaint also alleges that in order to conceal their fraud, the defendants made false statements to an introducing broker and to futures commission merchants that held the defendants’ trading accounts and pool participants’ funds. The complaint further alleges that the defendants failed to comply with CFTC registration requirements and disclosure and reporting requirements. 

On January 28, 2022, the court cancelled a preliminary injunction hearing that was set for January 31, 2022 due to the death of Patel. 

The Division of Enforcement staff members responsible for this matter are Monique McElwee, Elsie Robinson, Jeff Le Riche, Christopher Reed, and Charles Marvine.