Travis Ford and his company, Wolf Capital Crypto Trading, are facing serious legal trouble for running a fake crypto investment scheme. According to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Ford tricked thousands of people into putting money into what turned out to be a scam.

Between October 2022 and December 2024, Ford raised over $10.1 million from more than 3,300 investors. He promised them huge daily returns—between 1% and 3.5%—claiming he could earn those profits by trading Bitcoin, Ethereum, and crypto futures using a mix of manual strategies and trading bots. That would’ve meant yearly gains as high as 1,277%, which is far beyond what’s realistic in any market.

Ford marketed himself as a successful trader, even saying he made a fortune trading oil during the COVID-19 pandemic. But regulators say that wasn’t true. In reality, he had little experience with digital assets and lost money trading oil-related stocks.

The CFTC says Ford misled investors by only showing them winning trades on Telegram and Discord while hiding his losses. For example, from February to July 2023, he claimed he made $3.5 million in profits. But records from a crypto exchange showed that he actually lost around $869,000 during that time. That’s a difference of over $4.3 million.

Ford later admitted to faking screenshots of trades and portfolio values using Photoshop to make it look like people were making money when they weren’t. By August 2023, Wolf Capital only had about $3,000 left—far less than what investors were told.

As the losses piled up and he couldn’t pay the promised returns, Ford started using new investors’ money to pay earlier ones—classic Ponzi scheme behavior. In total, he paid out about $2.4 million in fake “returns” using funds from other investors.

He even tried to keep the scheme alive by lowering daily returns from 2% to 1.5% in April 2023 and then again to 1.1% in June. But by July 2023, he shut everything down.

Investors were told they could withdraw their money after a 60-day lockup period, but most never got their original deposits back. Ford kept encouraging them to leave their funds in the smart contract system, promising future profits that never came.

Neither Ford nor Wolf Capital was registered with the CFTC as required by law for commodity pool operators. The CFTC has been cracking down on similar crypto and forex scams, including one involving $145 million in fraud.

In criminal court, Ford pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on January 9, 2025. He admitted that he knew the returns he promised were impossible and that he lied to get people to invest or stay invested in his project. He was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay financial penalties on November 13, 2024.

The CFTC’s civil complaint is seeking to recover money for victims, force Ford to give up his illegal profits, fine him further, and permanently ban him and his company from participating in any trading or investment activities under CFTC oversight.

This case is similar to other recent crypto scams where fraudsters used flashy tech promises or AI claims to lure investors into fake trading platforms. Wolf Capital was initially just Ford’s personal business but was later registered as an LLC in Oklahoma in April 2023 before being marked as inactive.

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