Court permanently barred Voyager’s former CEO from marketing retail crypto services

A federal judge entered a stipulated order on June 27, 2025 permanently barring former Voyager Digital chief executive Stephen Ehrlich from marketing or offering retail cryptocurrency products and services and requiring a $2.8 million payment to resolve Federal Trade Commission claims.

The order made a negotiated resolution enforceable in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. It mattered because the FTC’s case focused on consumer-protection promises at a failed crypto platform—especially claims involving Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation coverage—rather than on whether a token was a security or commodity.

The payment was more complicated than one headline number

The entered order imposed a $570.1 million monetary judgment against Stephen Ehrlich and a separate $2.8 million judgment against relief defendant Francine Ehrlich. It directed Stephen Ehrlich to pay the FTC $2.8 million: $2.05 million within seven days and $750,000 within four months, with the second amount subject to credit for qualifying payment under the parallel Commodity Futures Trading Commission case.

After full satisfaction of the $2.8 million payment, the $570.1 million judgment would be suspended. That suspension depended on the truthfulness and completeness of Stephen Ehrlich’s sworn financial representations. If a court later found a material omission or misstatement on an FTC motion, the larger judgment could become due, reduced by specified payments and consumer distributions.

The $570.1 million figure therefore was not an event-day cash recovery. Nor did the order guarantee that each former Voyager customer would receive a particular amount. The FTC could place recovered money in a consumer-relief fund; any money not used for related relief would go to the U.S. Treasury.

A permanent but specific retail-crypto ban

The injunction permanently prohibited Stephen Ehrlich from advertising, marketing, promoting or offering for sale—or helping others do those things for—any retail product or service used to buy, sell, deposit, withdraw, distribute or trade cryptocurrency.

That language was broader than a ban tied only to Voyager, but narrower than a prohibition on every possible job in finance or blockchain. The order also barred material misrepresentations about products or services, restricted obtaining customer financial information through false statements, and limited disclosure of nonpublic personal information without express informed consent.

Stephen and Francine Ehrlich waived rights to appeal the order. They neither admitted nor denied the FTC complaint’s allegations, apart from facts necessary to establish jurisdiction. The resolution was civil; the reviewed order did not impose a criminal conviction.

The allegations behind the settlement

The FTC’s October 12, 2023 complaint alleged that Voyager and Ehrlich portrayed the platform as a safe bank alternative and misrepresented the reach of FDIC insurance. The complaint said Voyager halted withdrawals and transfers on July 1, 2022 and its operating companies filed for bankruptcy on July 5, leaving customers without access to more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency and cash. Those loss and conduct statements remained agency allegations, not admissions in the June 27 order.

A separate primary record supports the insurance context. On July 28, 2022, the FDIC and Federal Reserve demanded that Voyager stop statements suggesting the company was FDIC-insured, that all customer funds on the platform were covered, or that insurance protected customers against Voyager’s own failure. The agencies explained that Voyager itself was not an insured bank and that deposit insurance did not cover Voyager’s failure.

What June 27 established

The June 27 order established personal restrictions, a payment mechanism and enforceable compliance duties for Voyager’s former leader. It did not resolve the bankruptcy distribution, adjudicate every allegation after trial, classify any cryptoasset, or conclude the separate CFTC litigation.

Its institutional significance was narrower and durable: consumer-protection law could reach safety and insurance representations made by crypto intermediaries, and a corporate failure did not necessarily end scrutiny of the executives who marketed the platform.