An Open Letter to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig

Chairman Selig,

On April 1, 2026, you wrote: "The Biden-era approach of regulation through enforcement has also come to an end."

On March 9, 2026, at the FIA Global Cleared Markets Conference, you said: "We shouldn't forget that, in the recent past, regulatory agencies were weaponized against these innovative industries."

On January 29, 2026, you declared: "Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is history, regulation by enforcement is dead."

I am writing to tell you that you are wrong. Regulation by enforcement is not dead. It is alive. It is active. It is destroying my family right now, today, under your watch, with your name on the letterhead.

Your agency is still prosecuting me.

On April 2, 2026 — one day after you declared regulation by enforcement dead — you announced lawsuits against state regulators, pledging to "defend market participants against overzealous regulators." The irony is staggering. You will fight state governments to protect market participants from overreach — but you will not lift a finger to protect me from the overreach of your own agency.

Who I Am

I am Sam Ikkurty, the managing partner of Rose City Fund, a digital asset fund that was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We filed Form D. We hired Seward & Kissel — one of the most respected securities law firms in the country — to ensure full compliance. We retained Intertrust Group as our third-party fund administrator. We worked with reputable accountants. We did everything by the book.

Our fund invested exclusively in ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. We had 69 limited partners in RCIF1. They collectively invested $5.9 million. They collectively redeemed $29.3 million. The mean compound annual growth rate was 303%. The highest individual return was a CAGR of 1,407%. The lowest was 16.44%.

The total number of investors who lost money: zero.

This is not my claim. This is the CFTC's own evidence. Their lead investigator, Heather Dasso, confirmed it under oath.

Our SEC filings are public record:

• SEC EDGAR: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001842816
• Form D Filing: https://13f.info/form-d/0001842816-rose-city-income-fund-ii-lp

We were an SEC-registered fund. The CFTC sued us anyway.

What Your Agency Did

On May 10, 2022, the Biden-era CFTC filed a complaint against me in the Northern District of Illinois. They did it in secret. They did not notify my legal counsel — even though they knew who my lawyers were. They told my counsel the matter was "confidential."

The next day, May 11, a court-appointed Receiver froze every dollar I had. Not just the fund's assets. My personal bank accounts. Everything. An ex parte restraining order — obtained without my knowledge, without my presence, without a single word of defense.

Five days later, on May 16, 2022, ten federal agents — including four armed United States Marshals — raided my home in Portland, Oregon. They interrogated me for six hours. The CFTC's lead attorney on the case, Candice Haan, was present. During that interrogation, I sat at my desktop computer while Investigator Dasso, Attorney Haan, and Receiver Kopecky watched, and I walked them through every transaction on Etherscan. All of them told me it was "the first time they are looking at Etherscan." I showed them our SEC registration. They did not know we had one. I showed them our Private Placement Memorandum. They did not know what a PPM was. I told them about our auditor, Richey May. They did not know we had an auditor. I told them about our fund administrator, Intertrust Group. They did not know we had one. I told them about our legal counsel, Seward & Kissel. They did not know we had counsel. They had not reviewed a single monthly balance sheet or income statement. They had never heard of Etherscan, Zapper, or Debank — the basic tools that any person investigating a DeFi fund would use on day one.

These are the people who brought a federal fraud case against an SEC-registered fund. They did not know what a PPM was.

They took the evidence. They ignored all of it. Every word. Every document. Every blockchain record.

Then they prosecuted me anyway.

And the District Court let them. Judge Mary M. Rowland issued a 38-page summary judgment ruling in favor of the CFTC. That ruling does not mention the blockchain. It does not mention the StoneTurn forensic report. It does not address Investigator Dasso's sworn admission that she never examined the blockchain evidence. In a digital asset fraud case, the judge wrote 38 pages without once addressing the actual digital asset evidence. She treated the CFTC's statement of facts as largely undisputed — because she never examined the facts that disputed them.

But the facts were disputed. Formally. On the record. Under oath.

On August 8, 2022, my attorneys filed a formal Answer to the Complaint — Docket 40 — denying every material allegation of fraud, paragraph by paragraph, and asserting ten affirmative defenses. The Third Affirmative Defense cited the Ethereum blockchain as proof of legitimate investment. The Fourth stated that an independent third-party fund administrator — not me — controlled all fund transfers. The Fifth stated that no act was malicious, willful, or made with intent to violate any law. The Tenth stated that we never operated as a commodity pool operator and never traded in commodity interests.

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, a court may only grant summary judgment when there is no genuine dispute of material fact. The moment that Answer was filed, every material fact in this case was in dispute. That is not my characterization. That is black-letter civil procedure, unchanged since 1938.

Judge Rowland granted summary judgment anyway. On a record where every allegation of fraud had been formally denied. On a record where ten affirmative defenses had been asserted. On a record where the blockchain evidence — the only evidence that actually mattered — had never been examined by the CFTC's own investigator. This is not a close call. Granting summary judgment on a genuinely disputed factual record is reversible error. It is the central issue before the Seventh Circuit today.

Morrison Cohen's letter to Attorney General Bondi described the result: "The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the CFTC, assessing Ikkurty and Jafia with disgorgement and penalties of over $200 million." Two hundred million dollars. Against a man whose investors all made money. Based on a ruling that never examined the blockchain.

During discovery, the CFTC was asked to name a single "commodity interest" traded by Rose City Fund. They could not name one. Not one. The agency that claimed jurisdiction over my fund under the Commodity Exchange Act could not identify a single commodity. As I told the court: "Since CFTC is not able to name a single commodity interest traded by the funds, the complaint allegations about violations to the Commodities Exchange Act is an outright lie."

The Investigator Who Never Looked at the Blockchain — and the Press Releases That Lied About It

Chairman Selig, you clerked for Commissioner Giancarlo. You worked at the SEC's Cryptocurrency Task Force. You understand digital assets. So I need you to understand what I am about to tell you, because it is the single most damning fact in this entire case.

The CFTC's lead investigator in a digital asset case — Heather Dasso — admitted under oath, in her September 5, 2023 deposition, that she never looked at the blockchain.

Her exact words, under oath:

"As far as this case, I did not look at the blockchain, correct." "Correct."

This is not a technicality. In a digital asset case, the blockchain is the evidence. It is the immutable, public, cryptographically verified record of every transaction. Not looking at the blockchain in a crypto fraud case is like investigating a murder without visiting the crime scene. It is like prosecuting an arson without checking if there was a fire.

It is not negligence. It is willful blindness. And it was deliberate — because the blockchain would have destroyed their case.

As I wrote in my pro se filing to the District Court: "It would be absurd, if I were to argue in this court that 3 + 5 is not equal to 8 because we all rely on mathematics as foundation of our knowledge. In the same way, there is enormous body of advanced mathematics that protects cryptography. It would be absurd to question the veracity of Ethereum blockchain transactions as questioning if 3 + 5 = 8 or not." The Ethereum blockchain records every transaction to the seventeenth decimal point — with more precision than NASA uses for rocketry calculations. It is mathematically impossible for any human being to corrupt this ledger. And the CFTC's lead investigator chose not to look at it.

The blockchain shows nearly $19 million in verifiable, legitimate DeFi transactions. It shows every deposit, every redemption, every dividend payment. It proves — mathematically, cryptographically, irrefutably — that no funds were misappropriated.

Dasso knew this. She had the data. I handed it to her personally during the raid. She chose not to look.

And there is one more admission from that same deposition that the CFTC has never answered. Dasso confirmed under oath that not a single investor had complained to her about missing dividend payments. Think about what that means. The CFTC built a federal fraud case — raided a man's home, froze his family's assets, destroyed his company, and pursued a $209 million judgment — on behalf of investors who had never complained. The supposed victims of this supposed fraud had not called the CFTC. Had not written to the CFTC. Had not reported a single missing payment. The agency did not act because investors were harmed. The agency acted because it chose to act — against a fund whose investors were being paid, on time, every month.

And then — while suppressing the blockchain evidence — the CFTC issued public press releases calling me a fraudster. They sent those press releases to every financial news outlet in the country. They destroyed my professional reputation with statements they knew, or should have known, were false — because their own investigator had never examined the evidence that would have refuted them. The record is public:

• CFTC Press Release 8532-22 (May 19, 2022) — filed nine days after the secret complaint, before any defense was heard, calling me a fraudster to the national press.
• CFTC Press Release 8931-24 (July 3, 2024) — issued after the summary judgment that never examined the blockchain, amplifying the $200M+ penalty figure to every financial outlet.
• CFTC Press Release 8959-24 (September 3, 2024) — announced the $209M order, calling it a "Ponzi scheme" — the same word their own investigator admitted she never used in her sworn declaration.

These press releases remain live on CFTC.gov. They appear in every search of my name. They are the first thing any employer, investor, or journalist finds. The CFTC published them knowing their investigator had never looked at the blockchain. This is not aggressive prosecution. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, making false statements in a federal matter is a crime. These public servants used the machinery of the federal government to publish falsehoods about me to the entire world — and they did it while suppressing the evidence that proved I was innocent.

Now, in 2026, the Receiver is pursuing "profitable investors" — the very investors who made money in the Rose City Fund — in litigation to claw back their gains as "fraudulent transfers." The Sixteenth Status Report (Dkt. 470) confirms this litigation is ongoing, with discovery exchanged and StoneTurn forensic consultants engaged. The CFTC's theory has come full circle: first they seized the assets of investors who lost money, now their appointed Receiver is suing the investors who made money. Every investor in the Rose City Fund has been targeted by the United States government.

The Victims Who Don't Exist

The CFTC built its entire case on the premise that I defrauded my investors. There is one problem with this theory: my investors say otherwise.

Under oath, Investigator Dasso made three admissions that obliterate the CFTC's case:

1. "No customer has ever told me that they did not receive their promised dividend payment." (Deposition, p. 44)
2. She admitted she was "not aware of a single investor who exited the fund at a loss."
3. When asked whether her declaration mentions "Ponzi scheme," she answered: "No, it does not." (Deposition, p. 67)

Read that again. The CFTC's own investigator — under oath — confirmed that no investor complained, no investor lost money, and her own sworn declaration never used the word "Ponzi." The Ponzi theory was invented after the fact, by prosecutors looking for a crime to justify the raid they had already conducted.

The second admission deserves its own moment. This is the exact sworn exchange, verbatim, from pages 87–88 of the deposition transcript:

Q: Are you aware of any investor in Rose City Income Fund II who held a fund position and redeemed that fund position at a loss vis-à-vis what they contributed in the fund initially?

A: No, I'm not aware of that.

— Heather Dasso, CFTC Lead Investigator, under oath, Deposition pp. 87–88 (Sept. 5, 2023)

There are no victims. The CFTC's own investigator confirmed it under oath. So the question must be asked — and it demands an answer: for whom is this $209 million judgment? Not for investors. They made money. Not for the public. The fund was SEC-registered and operating lawfully. The judgment exists for one reason: to justify the existence of a case that should never have been brought — after the CFTC had already frozen a family's assets, destroyed a company, and published false press releases to the entire country.

When the Receiver moved to liquidate the fund's digital assets, 100% of investors filed formal objections. Not a majority. Not 90%. Every single one. They did not want the CFTC's "protection." They wanted their fund manager back.

The CFTC continued the prosecution anyway.

An independent forensic analysis by StoneTurn Group — conducted by Charles R. Soha, CFE, Managing Director — confirmed what the blockchain already proved: no misappropriation of funds. The report documented that Fund II investors received returns as high as 339.55% in a single year, and Fund I achieved a mean CAGR of 303% for exiting partners.

A 303% mean CAGR is mathematically impossible in a Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi, withdrawals must be covered by new investment, not by legitimate market gains. The numbers do not lie. The blockchain does not lie. Only the CFTC's narrative lies.

The Jurisdiction That Doesn't Exist

Chairman Selig, on January 29, 2026, you said: "I agree with Chairman Atkins that 'most crypto assets trading today are not securities.' We will advance a clear crypto asset taxonomy so that market participants can understand whether their products fall within CFTC jurisdiction, SEC jurisdiction, both, or neither."

The tokens in my fund — OHM, Klima, and WBTC — have no futures contracts. The CFTC does not contest this. There are no derivatives, no options, no contracts for future delivery associated with these tokens.

The Commodity Exchange Act defines "commodity" as "goods and articles... and all services, rights, and interests... in which contracts for future delivery are presently or in the future dealt in." (7 U.S.C. § 1a(9))

The statute is plain. To be a commodity regulated by the CFTC, there must be a futures contract. Where there is none — where the good is just a good, with no contracts for future delivery, derivatives, options, or other CFTC-regulation hook in sight — the CFTC has no jurisdiction.

The Biden-era CFTC invented a theory that because some digital assets (like Bitcoin) have futures contracts, all digital assets are commodities. The District Court accepted this theory. It is now before the Seventh Circuit.

My appellate counsel at Morrison Cohen LLP — one of the most experienced cryptocurrency law firms in the country — wrote to you on the day of your swearing-in. Their letter stated it plainly: "No matter what anyone thinks of Ikkurty and Jafia or their actions, the CFTC's case against them does not concern 'commodities' as defined by the CEA, and the CFTC never was permitted to bring it." They wrote to Attorney General Bondi with equal directness: "The worst part is that the CFTC's case was all based on a lie: the Biden CFTC's flatly erroneous interpretation of the CEA. The CFTC never had jurisdiction to bring this case in the first place."

These are not the words of a desperate defendant. These are the words of Y. David Scharf, Chair and Co-Managing Partner of Morrison Cohen, and Jason Gottlieb, Partner — lawyers who staked their professional reputations on this case because the law is that clear.

You know this is wrong. You said so yourself on March 9, 2026: "The CFTC is not a merit-based regulator — we do not decide what people should be able to trade. Nor are we going to regulate through enforcement."

Yet that is exactly what the Biden-era Division of Enforcement did in my case. They decided what people should be able to trade. They regulated through enforcement. And they are still doing it — under your chairmanship.

On March 9, 2026, you told the Bankless podcast — in an episode heard by millions — that "The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets. It does not regulate all of the spot markets." My fund traded spot Ethereum tokens. Not futures. Not derivatives. Not options. Spot. By your own definition of your own agency's jurisdiction, you have no authority over what my fund did. You said so yourself, on the record, to a global audience.

In the same interview, you spoke about DeFi: "We've got to clarify a clear line, a safe harbor to make sure that activity can happen here in America." My fund was a DeFi fund. You are promising safe harbors for the next generation of DeFi builders while your agency destroys the one who was already here.

And on March 17, 2026, you personally co-signed a Joint SEC-CFTC Interpretation — a 68-page taxonomy classifying most crypto assets and establishing, in your own words, "clear and rational rules of the road." That interpretation implicitly repudiates the very theory the Biden-era CFTC used to assert jurisdiction over my fund. You have already told the entire industry that the old approach was wrong. You just haven't told the Seventh Circuit.

The Receiver Who Enriched Himself — at My Family's Expense

While my family went homeless — while my mother suffered a stroke, while my daughter's education was destroyed, while I could not buy groceries — the court-appointed Receiver, James L. Kopecky of Kopecky Schumacher Rosenburg LLC, was billing the frozen estate every ninety days without interruption.

Court records show that KSR has filed fifteen separate requests for payment since May 2022. From the eleven requests I have been able to obtain, KSR collected at least $451,112 in fees and expenses from the frozen estate — money that belonged to investors. The Sixteenth Status Report (Dkt. 470, April 1, 2026) confirms a sixteenth fee request is due May 15, 2026. The billing continues even as the case winds down. Meanwhile, $5,000,000 remains sitting in the Qualified Settlement Fund — frozen — while his attorneys continue to bill.

He ignored the unanimous opposition of 100% of investors to asset liquidation. He coordinated with the Division of Enforcement to obstruct my defense and delay payments to my lawyers, crippling my ability to fight the case. Five law firms cycled through my defense because the Receiver and the CFTC made it financially impossible for any attorney to stay.

The Sixteenth Status Report (Dkt. 470) reveals yet another layer: a class action lawsuit was filed against the financial institutions that processed investor funds, and settled for $3.75 million. Of that, investors received only $2,434,463 net of attorney's fees and costs. The remaining $1.3 million went to lawyers — Carpenter Lipps LLP, yet another firm billing the frozen estate. The investors whose money was seized by the CFTC in 2022 are still waiting for a "final distribution" in 2026. Four years later.

This is not receivership. This is the systematic extraction of wealth from a frozen estate by public servants and their contractors — conducted under color of law, authorized by a federal court, and funded by the assets of a man who was never convicted of anything.

They Stripped Me of My Right to Counsel

What the CFTC and the court did next was not merely aggressive litigation. It was the deliberate destruction of my ability to defend myself.

My uncle — a family member who believed in my innocence — executed a sworn affidavit, a legally binding promise under oath, guaranteeing that he personally would pay my attorneys' fees. This was not a loan from the frozen estate. This was a private family member, untouched by any court order, pledging his own money to ensure I could have legal representation.

The court ignored the affidavit. At the CFTC's behest, Judge Rowland ordered my attorneys to disgorge $100,000 in fees — money that had already been paid, money that came from a sworn family guarantee, money that had nothing to do with any frozen asset. My lawyers were forced to reach into their own pockets and write a check for $100,000 to the Receivership estate. (Dkt. No. 401)

"On October 3, 2024, the Court Ordered that Mr. Ikkurty, Jafia, LLC, Vadim Glozman, and Nishay Sunan return $100,000 in fees paid to Messrs. Glozman and Sunan. (Dkt. No. 401) Mr. Glozman delivered a check in the amount of $100,000 in satisfaction of the Court's Order on October 15, 2024."

— Receiver's Tenth Status Report, p. 5  |  View Document (PDF)

Think about what this means. A federal judge — in a case where the government's own investigator admitted she never looked at the blockchain, where 100% of investors opposed the prosecution, where an independent forensic expert found no misappropriation — forced a defendant's lawyers to pay back money out of their own pockets. Not because the money was stolen. Not because it came from the frozen estate. But to punish the act of defending me.

The result was inevitable: my attorneys withdrew from the case. Not because they lost faith in my innocence. Because they had been financially bled dry for representing me. The CFTC did not beat me in court on the merits. They bankrupted my defense team. They used the judiciary as a weapon to make sure I could not fight back.

Chairman Selig, this is not zealous prosecution. This is the extinguishment of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel — achieved not through argument, but through financial strangulation. This is what "a culture that the CFTC is above the law" looks like in practice.

The Human Cost: What Public Servants Did to My Family

Chairman Selig, you spoke at the FIA Conference about the "minimum effective dose" of regulation. You said: "Regulate too little — and markets lose integrity. Regulate too much, markets atrophy; innovation is exiled offshore."

Let me tell you what your agency's "dose" did to my family. These are not abstractions. These are the direct, documented consequences of decisions made by named public servants — Investigator Heather Dasso, Attorney Candice Haan, Supervisor Brian Snodgrass — who chose to pursue this case knowing what the evidence showed.

I lost my home. I became homeless. I cannot buy groceries with my own money. I cannot pay rent. My assets — earned through legitimate, SEC-registered investment activity that made every single investor money — remain frozen to this day, nearly four years later. The public servants who froze those assets have continued to collect their government salaries every two weeks without interruption.

My mother suffered a stroke from the stress of watching her son be destroyed by his own government. My daughter's education was disrupted. My family was torn apart. The CFTC's press releases — published to every financial news outlet in the country — called me a fraudster. They destroyed my professional reputation in the industry I had spent my career building. Every future employer, every potential investor, every professional contact who searches my name finds the CFTC's false accusations before they find the truth.

I cycled through five law firms. Not because I was guilty. Because the CFTC and the Receiver made it financially impossible for any attorney to stay. They froze my assets, then used my inability to pay lawyers as proof that I must be guilty. They weaponized poverty as a litigation strategy — and it is a strategy that violates the Sixth Amendment, 18 U.S.C. § 242 (deprivation of rights under color of law), and every principle of due process that this republic was founded upon.

And when I tried to speak publicly about what was done to me — when I posted an open letter to the CFTC Chairman on X — my account was suspended within ten minutes. An account I had maintained for sixteen years. Erased in ten minutes. That is the level of censorship and suppression that surrounds this case.

The Pattern of Corruption — and the Criminal Statutes That Apply

My case is not an isolated incident. It is part of a documented pattern of prosecutorial abuse within the CFTC's Division of Enforcement.

In CFTC v. Traders Global Group Inc. d/b/a My Forex Funds (D.N.J. 2025), a federal judge imposed millions of dollars in sanctions against the CFTC for "willful false statements" and "bad faith conduct." A federal court found that the CFTC lied to the court. That is not my characterization — it is the court's.

On May 13, 2025, CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham publicly condemned the Division of Enforcement:

"This case clearly shows that the Division has for far too long maintained a culture that the CFTC is above the law... leading to abuse of prosecutorial power and violation of due process."

— CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham, May 13, 2025

You praised Commissioner Pham's leadership when you took office. Her words describe my case with surgical precision.

The conduct in my case is not merely a policy disagreement. It is potentially criminal. Consider what the record shows:

• 18 U.S.C. § 1503 (Obstruction of Justice): Investigator Dasso admitted she never examined the blockchain evidence — the primary exculpatory evidence in a digital asset case. Evidence suppression in a federal proceeding is not a mistake. It is a federal crime.
• 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (Tampering with Evidence): The CFTC coordinated with the Receiver to delay and obstruct payments to my defense counsel, forcing five successive law firms to withdraw. Deliberately impairing a defendant's access to counsel is witness and proceeding tampering.
• 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (False Statements): The CFTC issued press releases to national media calling me a fraudster — while their own investigator had never examined the evidence that would have refuted those claims. Publishing knowingly false material statements in connection with a federal matter is a federal crime.
• 18 U.S.C. § 242 (Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law): The court-ordered disgorgement of $100,000 in attorney fees — forcing my lawyers to return money from a sworn family guarantee — deprived me of my Sixth Amendment right to counsel. When a public servant uses their official authority to strip a defendant of constitutional rights, that is a federal crime.

These are not my characterizations. These are the statutes. These are the facts. These are the names: Heather Dasso. Candice Haan. Brian Snodgrass. James Kopecky. Public servants who used the power of the United States government to starve a family, destroy a company, and ruin a man's reputation — while the blockchain sat there, immutable and ignored, proving every word of their case was a lie.

The DOJ Agrees With Me

On April 7, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — who is now the interim Attorney General of the United States — issued a memorandum titled "Ending Regulation By Prosecution." It states:

"The Justice Department is not a digital assets regulator. However, the prior Administration used the Justice Department to pursue a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed."

"Ongoing investigations that are inconsistent with the foregoing should be closed."

My case is inconsistent with this policy on every count. There is no evidence I violated any requirement "willfully." There is no evidence of actual investor harm — because there was none. The CFTC's own investigator confirmed both facts under oath.

The DOJ memo's author is now the Attorney General. The policy is not aspirational. It is binding. And my case violates it.

What I Am Asking You To Do

Chairman Selig, you have said — repeatedly, publicly, on the record — that the days of regulation by enforcement are over. You have said that agencies were weaponized against innovative industries. You have said the CFTC will focus on fraud, abuse, and manipulation — not policy-making through prosecution.

My case is the embodiment of everything you say you oppose.

I am asking you to do what your own words demand:

1. Dismiss the case. Direct the Division of Enforcement to withdraw the complaint in CFTC v. Sam Ikkurty, et al. There is no fraud. There are no victims. There is no jurisdiction. There is only a bureaucratic machine that refuses to admit it was wrong.

2. Return my assets. Every dollar frozen since May 2022 was earned through legitimate, SEC-registered investment activity. The asset freeze has lasted nearly four years. It has destroyed my family. End it.

3. Terminate the receivership. Receiver Kopecky has enriched himself at the expense of investors who unanimously oppose his appointment. His role serves no legitimate purpose. It never did.

4. Inform the Seventh Circuit. Tell the court that the CFTC's prior position — that all digital assets are commodities regardless of whether futures contracts exist — was wrong. You know it was wrong. Your own taxonomy initiative proves it. Say so on the record.

5. Refer the Division of Enforcement officials for criminal investigation. Investigator Dasso's willful refusal to examine the blockchain, Attorney Candice Haan's concealment of exculpatory evidence, and Supervisor Snodgrass's oversight of this prosecutorial misconduct implicate 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512, 1001, and 242. These are not policy disagreements. They are potential federal crimes committed by public servants against a private citizen. Commissioner Pham said the Division maintained "a culture that the CFTC is above the law." Refer these officials to the Inspector General and the DOJ. Prove that it isn't.

6. Retract the false press releases. The CFTC issued press releases to national media calling me a fraudster — while its own investigator had never examined the blockchain evidence. Those press releases destroyed my professional reputation and continue to appear in every search of my name. Issue a public correction. The agency that published false accusations has an obligation to correct them.

The Test of Your Chairmanship

Chairman Selig, you have given eloquent speeches about ending regulation by enforcement. You have written op-eds about a new Golden Age of American Markets. You have launched initiatives and task forces and joint projects with the SEC.

But speeches are not reform. Initiatives are not justice. The test of whether you mean what you say is not what you do with future cases. It is what you do with the cases that are still destroying people's lives right now.

My fund was registered with the SEC. My investors all made money. My investigator never looked at the blockchain. My investors unanimously opposed the prosecution. An independent forensic expert found no misappropriation. The DOJ's own policy says cases like mine should be closed. A federal judge sanctioned the CFTC for the same kind of misconduct in another case. A CFTC Commissioner publicly condemned the Division of Enforcement's culture of lawlessness.

And yet the case continues. The assets remain frozen. The Receiver continues billing. My family continues suffering.

Tomorrow, April 6, 2026, you are speaking at the Vanderbilt/Blockchain Association Inaugural Summit on Digital Assets. Your topic is the "CFTC's unified approach to federal oversight of crypto asset markets." You will stand at that podium and tell an audience of innovators, investors, and builders that the CFTC is their partner, not their persecutor.

When you say those words, know that I will be listening. Know that the people CC'd on this letter will be listening. Know that every crypto founder, every fund manager, every builder who has ever feared a knock on their door from a federal agency will be listening. And they will all be asking the same question:

If regulation by enforcement is really dead — why is Sam Ikkurty still being prosecuted?

This letter will remain published at samikkurty.com until the day this case is dismissed. Every speech you give, every op-ed you write, every conference where you declare a new Golden Age of American Markets — this letter will be the footnote that asks whether you meant it. The contradiction between your words and this case will follow your chairmanship until you resolve it.

You said on April 1, 2026: "The days of regulation by enforcement are over."

Prove it.

Sam Ikkurty

Tampa, Florida

April 2026