The 11-Minute Hearing That Froze $209 Million — Without Reading the Evidence
The 11-Minute Hearing That Froze $209 Million — Without Reading the Evidence
By Sam Ikkurty | April 12, 2026
On May 11, 2022, at 1:03 in the afternoon, a federal judge picked up the phone. Eleven minutes later, at 1:14 p.m., she hung up. In that time, without a single word from the defense, without reviewing all the evidence, and without even looking at the qualifications of the man she was about to hand control of an entire business to, Judge Mary M. Rowland had done the following:
- Frozen every asset I owned
- Appointed a receiver to seize and liquidate my fund
- Entered a statutory restraining order against me
- Sealed the entire case from public view
I was not on that call. My lawyers were not on that call. No one representing my interests was on that call. The CFTC had made sure of that.
"We Have Remained in a Covert Posture"
That is a direct quote from CFTC attorney Candice Haan, spoken on the record to Judge Rowland during that hearing. When the judge asked whether the CFTC was in contact with opposing counsel, Haan's answer was not "we could not reach them" or "we tried and failed." It was a deliberate, premeditated choice: covert posture. They had decided, as a matter of strategy, to make sure I had no idea what was coming.
The judge's response? "Okay."
That is the full extent of the court's scrutiny of the decision to deny me any notice or opportunity to be heard before losing everything I had built.
"Which I Plan to Do"
Before Haan had presented a single argument — before any evidence was discussed, before any legal standard was applied — Judge Rowland announced her decision. Here is the exact language from the official court transcript (Docket #414, filed November 20, 2024, page 4):
"So if I entered it today, which I plan to do..."
She had already decided. The hearing was not a hearing. It was a formality — a rubber stamp dressed up in judicial procedure. The CFTC filed its motions, submitted its proposed orders, and the judge signed them. The only question was logistics: how long the TRO would last, when to schedule the next conference, and how to keep the case sealed long enough to execute the raid.
A Receiver Appointed Without Reading His Resume
Among the orders entered that afternoon was the appointment of Kevin Rowe of KSR Group as receiver over my fund and all its assets. Judge Rowland acknowledged on the record that she had not reviewed his curriculum vitae. Her explanation:
"I trust that Mr. Kopecky has done this before."
She could not even keep the names straight. She was appointing a man named Kevin Rowe and referring to him as "Mr. Kopecky" — the name of the CFTC's proposed receiver from a different filing. She trusted that someone had done something before, and on that basis, she handed a stranger the keys to a fund that had made every single one of its 69 investors a profit.
That receiver has since billed over $451,000 in fees. He has filed clawback suits against investors who made money — the very people the CFTC claimed it was protecting. Not one of those 69 investors lost a dollar. One hundred percent of them have formally objected to the CFTC's actions. Thirty-two of them filed written objections with the court (Dkt. 204–243). The receiver continues to bill.
Missing Exhibits, No Problem
The judge also acknowledged during the hearing that she was missing exhibits. She had Exhibits J through CC, but Exhibits A through K were not in her possession. She noted this on the record and then proceeded to grant all three motions anyway.
To be clear about what those motions authorized: a complete freeze of all assets, the appointment of a receiver with broad powers to seize and liquidate property, and a statutory restraining order that would remain in place for years. All of it entered without a complete evidentiary record.
What the CFTC's Own Evidence Actually Showed
Here is what was not discussed in that 11-minute call, because no one was there to discuss it:
My fund, Rose City Income Fund, is an SEC-registered entity (CIK 0001842816). It invested exclusively in ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Every transaction — all 885 of them — is permanently recorded on the public Ethereum ledger and has been available for anyone to verify since the day each transaction occurred. The CFTC's own forensic expert, StoneTurn, reviewed those transactions and concluded that a Ponzi scheme was mathematically impossible given the on-chain data.
The CFTC's lead investigator, Heather Dasso, later admitted under oath that she had not looked at the blockchain before filing the declaration that was used to obtain the orders entered on May 11, 2022. She did not review the fund's Private Placement Memorandum. She did not review the 2-and-20 fee structure disclosed to all investors. She did not review the Intertrust fund administrator records. She did not review the Richey May audit. She did not review the SEC registration.
She filed a declaration. The judge signed the orders. I lost everything — in 11 minutes.
The Standard That Was Supposed to Apply
Federal law does not permit the government to freeze a person's assets and seize their business without notice simply because it asks. The Supreme Court has been clear on this point for decades. In Granny Goose Foods, Inc. v. Brotherhood of Teamsters, 415 U.S. 423 (1974), the Court described ex parte temporary restraining orders as an "extreme remedy" — one that must be strictly limited and followed by prompt adversarial review precisely because of the catastrophic harm they can cause when granted on incomplete information.
The Fifth Amendment's due process clause guarantees every person the right to be heard before the government deprives them of property. That guarantee is not suspended because the government calls its target a fraudster. It is not suspended because the government prefers a "covert posture." It is not suspended because a judge decides, before hearing argument, that she plans to sign the orders.
The constitutional requirement of a meaningful opportunity to be heard is not a technicality. It is the difference between a government of laws and a government of agencies.
What This Means Now
This transcript is now public. It is available on this site in full. Every journalist, every congressional staffer, every lawyer, every person who has ever wondered how the CFTC can destroy a profitable fund and call it consumer protection — they can read it for themselves.
Chairman Brian Quintenz, who now leads the CFTC, has spoken publicly about ending regulation by enforcement. Chairman Michael Selig, who preceded him, made the same promise. The transcript of the May 11, 2022 hearing is the test of whether those promises mean anything.
An agency that obtains a $209 million judgment after an 11-minute secret phone call — with missing exhibits, a pre-announced ruling, and a receiver appointed without reviewing his qualifications — is not protecting investors. It is not enforcing the law. It is doing something else entirely.
The blockchain record shows every dollar that went into my fund and every dollar that came out. Every investor made money. The CFTC's own expert confirmed it. The lead investigator admitted she never looked.
Eleven minutes. That is all it took to end four years of work, freeze every asset I owned, and set in motion a receivership that has cost investors more in fees than any alleged harm ever could have.
The transcript is available here — PDF. Read it yourself.