Mina Tadrus is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tadrus Capital LLC, a financial technology company that was marketed as a hedge fund utilizing artificial intelligence-driven, high-frequency trading strategies to generate high returns for investors. According to court documents and regulatory filings, Tadrus falsely claimed that his fund would deliver guaranteed annual returns of 18% to 30% by employing AI-based quantitative models. He raised over $5 million from at least 31 investors, primarily from the Egyptian-American Coptic Christian community, by promoting the fund as “recession-proof” and leveraging the excitement around AI technology.
However, Tadrus was charged with investment adviser fraud in September 2023 by the U.S. Department of Justice, which alleged that he operated a Ponzi scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil complaint in November 2023, accusing Tadrus of misrepresenting the fund’s investment strategy and using investor funds to pay earlier investors, cover personal expenses, and purchase luxury items, rather than investing them as promised. In February 2025, Tadrus pled guilty to the charges in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, before Judge Hector Gonzalez. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison on August 19, 2025, and ordered to pay $4,224,850 in restitution.
“While Tadrus sold a dream of high-profits to his investors, the only return they saw was the negative result of being swindled by someone they trusted. Today’s sentence and imposed restitution sees that Tadrus will spend real time behind bars and pay for his crimes. This new reality is not AI generated,” stated IRS-CI New York Special Agent in Charge Chavis.
As set forth in court filings, Tadrus, a former stockbroker registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and derivatives consultant for a global financial institution, founded Tadrus Capital LLC in June 2020. Tadrus claimed to operate “the world’s first private high-yielding and fixed-income quantitative hedge fund” powered by artificial intelligence (AI) high-frequency trading models to guarantee investors up to 30% returns annually. In reality, Tadrus used no AI-based algorithmic trading. Tadrus also falsely claimed that Tadrus Capital was “recession-proof” and maintained liquidity with access to $5.5 billion in purchasing power.
Prior to founding Tadrus Capital, Tadrus worked as a derivatives consultant at JPMorgan Chase and later as a trader and supervisor at T3 Trading Group. He holds a Master of Arts in Intelligence Studies from American Military University (AMU) and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Dayton School of Law. Despite claims in earlier media coverage that he managed institutional capital using algorithmic trading and founded a quantitative alternative asset management firm, the legal proceedings confirm that the investment activities he described were not genuine, and the fund did not engage in the AI-powered trading it advertised.
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