Control-Finance
A UK-registered operation that the CFTC says fraudulently solicited at least 22,858 BTC (~$147M) from more than 1,000 customers in 2017 by falsely claiming expert trading and referral rewards. A U.S. court entered a default judgment against principal Benjamin Reynolds.
Also known as: Control-Finance, Control Finance, Benjamin Reynolds
Summary
Control-Finance Limited, run by Benjamin Reynolds of Manchester, England, solicited Bitcoin from the public in 2017 on the promise that specialized traders would generate guaranteed profits, supported by an elaborate affiliate-referral program. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) says it was a fraud and misappropriation scheme. [1][2]
Scale and outcome
The CFTC alleged Reynolds obtained at least 22,858 BTC — worth at least $147 million at the time — from more than 1,000 customers, made no trades on their behalf, paid no promised rewards, and made Ponzi-style payments before shutting down and keeping the deposits. After Reynolds failed to appear, a U.S. court entered a default judgment in 2021 ordering about $143 million in restitution and a $429 million civil penalty. [1][2]
Bracketed numbers refer to the numbered sources listed below.
Sources (2)
See also
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — Justin Sun token freezeProjectsWLFI, a DeFi project linked to Donald Trump and his family, blacklisted/froze the wallet of major investor Justin Sun in Sept 2025 — ~540–595M unlocked WLFI tokens (~$107M) plus ~2.4B locked. Sun sued, alleging an undisclosed admin 'blacklist backdoor'; WLFI denied it and threatened a countersuit. The dispute is ongoing.
Gala Games exploitTokensOn May 20, 2024 an attacker abused a privileged minter account on the GALA token contract to mint 5 billion GALA (≈$200M+ nominal) and dumped ~600M of them for ~$22M of ETH before Gala froze the address. Gala Games called it an internal access-control failure; the attacker later returned the ~$22M.
This page was last updated on Jun 15, 2026. View revision history.
