Three men ordered to pay $129M in fraud that began in Lee County

A fraud case that originated in Lee County and now includes civil fines, jail time for one perpetrator and a pair of alleged Brazilian fugitives will cost three men nearly $130 million, after a ruling this week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

The latest in the saga: The court ordered the three principal men in the case, in what's being called a commodity pool scheme, to pay more than $129 million for their roles in the fraud. A commodity pool is an investment vehicle that pools together money from multiple investors to trade commodity futures or options collectively, according to the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates them. A commodity pool is overseen by an operator who is supposed to register with the CFTC.

In this case, the commodity pool was operated by a company that used to be based out of Fort Myers called Empires Consulting Corp, state records show. The CFTC says the company never registered as a commodity pool operator, one of several red flags that caused the agency to file a complaint against it in the southern district court in 2022.