A New York hedge fund founder is facing federal fraud charges after prosecutors say he sent investors fake account statements showing returns that were, well, not real. His name is Vuk Vukovic, and he’s 38 years old. He founded Oraclum Capital LLC and runs the firm’s main fund, the Orca Bason Fund.
Vukovic was charged with one count of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. He appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer E. Willis in Manhattan, and the complaint against him was unsealed on September 11, 2026.
The Pitch
Orca Bason wasn’t your average hedge fund. According to the complaint, it told investors it made trading decisions using what it called “wisdom of crowds” and network analysis of social media chatter, basically trying to predict where markets would move based on online sentiment. The strategy was branded as the BASON model, something Vukovic originally built for political forecasting before turning it toward markets.
Vukovic has a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford, and that academic background was reportedly a big part of how he sold the fund to investors. By late 2024, the fund had grown to around $23 to $25 million in assets, and it claimed gross returns of more than 50% over two years.
What Prosecutors Say Actually Happened
Here’s where things fall apart, according to the government. Prosecutors say that since at least 2024, Vukovic sent investors monthly account statements that overstated how the fund was actually performing. One example from the complaint: an Oraclum-generated statement from June 2024 showed an investor up 12.29% for the year. The fund’s own administrator, though, had that same investor down 1.38%. That’s not a small rounding difference, that’s two totally different stories about the same money.
It gets more direct too. In June 2025, a prospective investor received a statement showing a 38.44% return. Prosecutors allege that statement, along with others, was falsified and overstated the fund’s actual net asset value.
How It Came Apart
The SEC opened an investigation around September 2025, not long after Orca Bason filed paperwork showing it had raised $46 million from 76 investors. As part of that probe, one investor apparently reached out directly to the fund’s outside administrator to double check their numbers. The administrator told them it never sent the documents the investor had received.
Federal agents searched Vukovic’s premises on September 9, 2026, two days before his court appearance. During that search, prosecutors say Vukovic admitted that some of the brokerage statements were false, but he denied personally sending the doctored documents to investors himself.
What He’s Facing
Each charge, securities fraud and wire fraud, carries a maximum of 20 years in federal prison. That’s the outer legal limit set by Congress though, not a prediction of what would actually happen if he’s convicted. The complaint is just that, an accusation, and Vukovic is presumed innocent unless the government proves otherwise.
The public DOJ announcement doesn’t put a specific dollar figure on investor losses, and it doesn’t name any of the investors involved either.
Officials Weigh In
U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said Vukovic attracted investors and kept them from pulling their money out by reporting high returns that simply weren’t real. FBI Assistant Director James C. Barnacle Jr. called it a serious breach of market integrity, while U.S. Postal Inspection Service official Ketty Larco-Ward pointed out that investing always carries some risk, but a breach of trust adds a whole other layer that shouldn’t be tolerated.
The case is being handled by the Southern District of New York’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, with the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service both involved in the investigation. There’s also a separate wrinkle here, Croatian regulators had already flagged issues with how the fund was reaching investors even before U.S. prosecutors stepped in, so this case may not be the end of Vukovic’s regulatory troubles.