Vuk Vukovic built a career around turning data into predictions. The Croatian economist earned a PhD at Oxford, studied political economy at the London School of Economics, helped build a data company that claimed successful predictions of Brexit, Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory and Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, and eventually took the same broader idea of crowd intelligence and network analysis into financial markets. In December 2022, he launched Oraclum Capital in New York and became the chief executive and chief investment officer of its flagship Orca Bason Fund. Now, federal prosecutors in Manhattan say the numbers presented to investors did not match reality.
Vukovic, 38, was arrested in September 2026 and charged with one count of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. The charges carry statutory maximum penalties of 20 years each, although those maximums do not mean Vukovic would necessarily receive such a sentence if convicted. He appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer E. Willis in Manhattan on September 10. The Justice Department has emphasized that the allegations remain accusations and that Vukovic is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
The case centers on a deceptively simple question: what were investors actually earning? According to an FBI affidavit supporting the criminal complaint, Oraclum began, at least in 2024, providing investors with statements that prosecutors say overstated the fund’s performance. The government also alleges that a prospective investor was sent fabricated brokerage statements showing a substantially higher net asset value and stronger returns than the fund actually had.
One example is particularly stark. In June 2025, a prospective investor asked Vukovic to be connected with the fund administrator so that he could conduct due diligence before investing. The following day, Oraclum’s investor-relations email sent him documents purporting to be brokerage statements. One showed a 2024 time-weighted return of 38.44 percent and a net asset value of approximately $18.45 million. The actual brokerage records reviewed by investigators showed a 16.39 percent return and a net asset value of about $12.77 million.
The discrepancy was not limited to one year’s figures. The documents sent to the prospective investor showed a 19.05 percent return for part of 2023, while the brokerage records showed a negative 22.46 percent return for the corresponding period. The actual NAV listed by the brokerage was approximately $2.71 million, compared with nearly $4.99 million in the statement sent to the prospective investor.
The administrator, according to the complaint, told the prospective investor that it had never sent the documents. When questioned about the email, Vukovic reportedly described it to the administrator as an automated response from the back office and said it had been sent because he had copied the wrong email address. Investigators later compared the documents with the fund’s actual brokerage records and concluded that the statements provided to the prospective investor were false.
The government’s allegations go further because the same problem appears in documents involving existing investors. The FBI says the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating Oraclum around September 2025 and subpoenaed the firm for documents showing the fund’s monthly performance. Investigators then compared statements supplied by Oraclum with statements generated by the fund’s administrator. In one June 2024 example, an Oraclum statement showed an investor with a 12.29 percent year-to-date return. The administrator’s corresponding statement showed a 1.38 percent loss.
Investigators also compared approximately 20 investor statements for the period ending December 31, 2023. According to the FBI affidavit, every Oraclum-produced statement in that sample showed a higher year-to-date return than the corresponding administrator statement, with some differences exceeding 10 percentage points. Two investors interviewed by law enforcement on September 9 confirmed that they had received the Oraclum-generated statements.
There is an important distinction between the size of the fund and the amount of money allegedly lost. A September 2025 SEC Form D amendment for Orca Bason Fund reported $46 million in securities sold to 76 investors, with Vukovic signing the filing as manager of the fund’s general partner, Oraclum Capital LLC. That filing is an issuer-reported offering disclosure, not an independent finding by the SEC that $46 million was fraudulently obtained. The criminal complaint also does not establish a final dollar figure for investor losses or alleged illicit gains.
The regulatory history in Croatia adds another layer to the story. Before the U.S. criminal case became public, Croatia’s Financial Services Supervisory Agency, Hanfa, had already taken action involving Oraclum’s activities in the country. In July 2025, Hanfa ordered the cooperative Zadruga Glas poduzetnika 2.0 to stop providing unauthorized investment services and ordered funds collected from members for investment in ORCA BASON to be returned or otherwise lawfully dealt with. Hanfa said the cooperative had been receiving and transmitting investment orders involving the U.S.-based fund and holding clients’ money in an ordinary business account without the protections required under Croatian law.
In December 2025, Hanfa separately ordered Oraclum Capital to cease activities in Croatia, including distribution and promotion of ORCA BASON units. The regulator later determined in June 2026 that Oraclum had complied with the corrective measures, but the restrictions on marketing and distribution remained in force under the terms of the earlier decisions. Hanfa has said that during its supervisory work it identified several irregularities connected with the offering and distribution of investments in the fund and communicated relevant information to U.S. authorities.
Bloomberg Adria reported that roughly €3.4 million had been invested through the Croatian cooperative before the regulatory intervention. That figure is separate from the $46 million reported in the U.S. fund’s SEC filing and should not be treated as an estimate of total investor losses.
Oraclum’s business was built around the BASON methodology, which the company describes as a proprietary system using crowd research and network analysis to forecast equity-market direction. Its own website identifies Vukovic as CEO and CIO, with Dejan Vinkovic serving as chief quant. The wider Oraclum enterprise originated with Oraclum Intelligence Systems, founded in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Vukovic, Vinkovic and Mile Sikic. The company later evolved from political and market prediction work into the New York hedge-fund operation.
The criminal complaint also gives an unusually direct account of what investigators say Vukovic told them. During the September 9 search of premises used by Vukovic and Oraclum, investigators say he acknowledged that the brokerage statements sent to the prospective investor were false and did not accurately reflect the fund’s assets or returns. He denied personally sending those documents, however, and said he was one of the people with access to the investor-relations email account. Investigators say he could identify only one other person whom he believed had access.
Vukovic has not been convicted, and the available public record does not show a guilty plea. The case remains a criminal proceeding based on a complaint, rather than a completed finding of fraud by a court. At the same time, the allegations are supported by specific comparisons between documents produced by Oraclum and records held by the fund’s administrator and broker, which is why the case goes beyond a dispute over investment performance or methodology.
The story matters because performance numbers are the foundation on which investors decide whether to put money into a fund and whether to leave it there. A bad investment can lose money honestly. A materially different return shown on an investor statement raises a fundamentally different question because the investor is no longer evaluating the same financial reality as the manager. In the Oraclum case, regulators had already intervened over the fund’s distribution in Croatia before U.S. investigators alleged that investors were being shown inflated performance figures. What ultimately happened in the federal case will determine whether those allegations become proven criminal conduct. Until then, the documents and regulatory record provide a clear reminder of why independent verification of returns, custody arrangements and regulatory status matters just as much as the sophistication of an investment strategy or the credentials of the person selling it.
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