# Louisiana Court Imposes $9.21 Million Penalty on NOLA FX Founder and Firms

By Riza Dagoc

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/regulation/37728
Published: 2026-10-22T10:27:25.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-22T10:27:25.000Z
Section: Regulation

> The civil penalty is jointly payable by DePetrillo and two companies; his criminal restitution order brings the combined amount to $15.96 million.

A Louisiana federal court ordered NOLA FX founder Michael B. DePetrillo and two companies to pay a $9.21 million civil penalty, bringing the penalty and his criminal restitution order to nearly $16 million.

The Sept. 30 default judgment makes DePetrillo, Meteor LLC and NOLA FX Capital Management LLC jointly and severally responsible for $9,211,492.44. The court set the penalty at three times the defendants’ monetary gain and found they fraudulently solicited and misappropriated $3,070,497.48.

The judgment permanently bars the defendants from trading on registered entities, trading commodity interests, soliciting funds for commodity-interest trades and seeking registration with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), subject to a regulatory exception.

The court granted the CFTC’s request for a default judgment after the defendants did not answer the complaint or respond to the motion. It accepted the agency’s well-pleaded facts as true. The CFTC’s case alleged that the defendants solicited funds for a pool intended to trade leveraged foreign-currency pairs, used false account statements showing purported profits and diverted investor money to pay earlier participants and cover DePetrillo’s personal expenses.

DePetrillo was sentenced in July 2025 to 108 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. His criminal sentence also ordered him to pay $6,748,412.79 in restitution and a separate $100 assessment.

The civil penalty and restitution order total $15,959,905.23, excluding the assessment. The civil judgment provides for interest on any unpaid penalty.