This Prop Firm got two CME Fines in 18 Months with Total Penalties Reach $245K

Tanius Just Took Another CME Hit. The Real Story Is the Pattern

The latest CME penalty against Tanius Technology is being framed as a second strike in 18 months. That actually understates how ugly the record looks. Based on the published dates, the two most recent CME related penalties landed less than eight months apart, with a $95,000 CBOT fine effective May 30, 2025 and a new $150,000 CBOT fine dated January 14, 2026. Together, those two cases alone bring the total to $245,000.

The January 2026 case is not the kind of enforcement action a firm shrugs off as a paperwork issue. According to the Chicago Board of Trade Business Conduct Committee findings reported by Finance Magnates and FX News Group, Tanius used a strategy in pro rata Treasury spread markets from January 2020 through December 2022 that involved entering multiple maximum size orders to capture a larger share of passive fills. During Treasury roll periods, the firm allegedly kept large stacks of those maximum quantity orders at the top price levels in the 2 Year, 5 Year, and 10 Year spread books.

That matters because the exchange did not just object to the optics of the strategy. It found that if those resting orders on one side of the market had been executed immediately, the margin required at that moment would have exceeded the net liquidation value of Tanius’s accounts. In plain English, the exchange concluded that the firm was leaning on more market presence than it could actually support if the market turned and filled everything at once. The panel said this conduct resulted in a disproportionate number of fills relative to the firm’s ability to take immediate execution and found violations of CBOT Rules 432.B.2 and 432.Q, leading to the $150,000 fine.

That alone would be a bad headline. But the real problem is that this was not an isolated episode. Just months earlier, CBOT fined Tanius $95,000 after finding that from March 3, 2023 through October 2, 2023 the firm used an automated trading system that entered opposing buy and sell orders for the same account in 10 Year T Note, Ultra 10 Year U.S. Treasury Note, and U.S. Treasury Bond futures, matching against itself on more than an incidental basis. The panel also found that although Tanius had developed functionality to address wash trades, it was not implemented consistently or comprehensively across strategies and was not communicated adequately to traders.

That May 2025 case matters for a second reason. It was not just about the self matching itself. The exchange also found a supervision failure. In other words, the issue was not merely what the system did, but that the firm did not have sufficient controls around what the system was doing. When a prop shop gets hit first for wash trading tied to weak implementation and supervision, then again for order book conduct that the exchange says distorted fill allocation beyond the firm’s real capacity to carry the risk, the narrative stops being bad luck. It starts looking like a repeated controls problem.

And if you zoom out further, the pattern gets worse. In September 2022, CME and CBOT disciplinary actions against Tanius described failures around operator ID management, disruptive trading, and supervision, with a combined fine of $150,000 allocated across companion exchange cases. One of those notices said a Tanius trader entered orders with the intent to cancel or modify them before execution in Treasury related futures markets, while the firm failed to diligently supervise despite receiving exchange comments about possible disruptive activity.

The same month, the CFTC issued its own order against Tanius tied to spoofing by a former employee on more than 1,000 occasions across futures contracts, primarily Treasury futures. The order said the employee placed smaller genuine orders on one side of the market and multiple larger orders on the other side that were intended to be canceled before execution. The CFTC said Tanius was derivatively liable, although it also acknowledged self reporting, cooperation, and remediation when setting the penalty.

So the sharp version of the story is this. The January 2026 fine was not just a second recent penalty. It landed on top of a longer record that already included wash trading findings, supervision failures, disruptive trading findings, and a federal spoofing case tied to conduct on CME group exchanges. That does not automatically mean every future allegation will be proven, and Tanius settled these matters without admitting or denying the rule violations in the exchange cases. But it does mean the firm now carries a regulatory history that is hard to dismiss as random or one off.

There is also one important distinction casual readers may miss. Tanius is not a retail challenge brand in the FTMO mold. It is an institutional style proprietary trading firm trading its own capital directly on exchange venues, which is exactly why CME and CBOT conduct rules apply here so directly. That makes the exchange findings even more revealing, because these are not complaints about influencer marketing, payout disputes, or demo account rules. They go straight to market conduct, order placement, supervision, and whether the firm’s systems were fit for the kind of trading it was doing.

For that reason, the most telling part of the latest case is not just the $150,000 number. It is what the panel said the strategy actually did. According to the findings as reported, Tanius used oversized order book presence to secure a disproportionate share of fills in pro rata Treasury markets while exposing a margin mismatch if those orders had been hit at once. That is not the language of a harmless edge. It is the language of an exchange saying the firm’s conduct had the potential to distort participation while outrunning its real capacity to absorb the trade.

That is why the bigger story here is not the headline fine. It is the pattern. And for any prop shop operating in highly automated futures markets, that pattern is the part that should worry people most.

Editorial source note: This article was independently written for editorial purposes based on public exchange disciplinary records, federal enforcement records, and industry reporting. It does not reproduce source wording.

Sources reviewed: Finance Magnates, January 20, 2026. FX News Group, January 20, 2026. CBOT disciplinary notice effective May 30, 2025. CME and CBOT disciplinary notices effective September 26, 2022. CFTC order dated September 26, 2022.