Two days after Orca Bason Fund made a filing showing $46 million of fund interests sold to 76 investors, the SEC issued a subpoena seeking records of the fund’s monthly performance, according to a newly unsealed federal complaint. Roughly a year later, founder Vuk Vukovic has been charged with securities fraud and wire fraud over an alleged scheme to overstate the hedge fund’s returns.
The September 11 case puts alleged reporting discrepancies at the center of a fund whose public pitch was unusually technology-driven. Oraclum Capital has marketed Orca Bason as using the “wisdom of crowds” and network analysis of social-media bubbles to forecast markets, with investment positions built around those signals.
Prosecutors are not alleging that the forecasting method itself was fraudulent. Instead, they accuse Vukovic of providing investors and prospective investors with performance figures that did not match brokerage and fund-administrator records.
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In one example, prosecutors said a prospective investor conducting due diligence in June 2025 received purported brokerage statements showing a 38.44% time-weighted return for 2024 and net asset value of $18.45 million. Investigators said the fund’s actual brokerage statement showed a 16.39% return and NAV of $12.77 million.
The same materials allegedly presented a 19.05% gain for a period spanning February 6 through December 29, 2023, with NAV of $4.99 million. Brokerage records cited by investigators showed a 22.46% loss for the full 2023 calendar year and NAV of $2.71 million. The date ranges differ, but prosecutors allege the statements sent to the prospective investor were falsified.
The investor separately contacted the fund administrator, which said it had not sent the documents bearing its name, according to the complaint. During a September 9, 2026 search of premises used by Vukovic and Oraclum, prosecutors say Vukovic acknowledged that the brokerage statements were false and did not accurately reflect the fund’s assets or returns, while denying that he personally sent them.
Investigators allege the discrepancies also reached existing investors. An Oraclum-generated June 2024 statement showed one investor up 12.29% year-to-date, while the administrator’s version showed a 1.38% loss. Investigators also compared roughly 20 statements for 2023 and said every Oraclum version showed a higher return than the administrator’s corresponding record, sometimes by more than 10 percentage points.
The SEC began investigating Oraclum around September 2025. Orca Bason’s amended form, filed September 8 that year, reported $46 million sold, 76 investors, and a $100,000 minimum investment. Those figures represent issuer-reported offering data rather than independently verified AUM.
Vukovic, 38, was presented before US Magistrate Judge Jennifer E. Willis on September 10. Each charge carries a maximum prison term of 20 years.
