United States v. Sewall

── United States v. Sewall ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Date: April 09, 2026 Category: General Appellate Case: 25-1001 Document: 74-1 Date Filed: 04/09/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT April 9, 2026 _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 25-1001 (D.C. No. 1:21-CR-00034-WJM-2) BRYANT EDWIN SEWALL, (D. Colo.) Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT * _________________________________ Before BACHARACH, McHUGH, and ROSSMAN, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ A jury convicted Appellant Bryant Edwin Sewall of fourteen counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He now appeals that conviction. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm. I. BACKGROUND In late 2015, Mr. Sewall became one of three partners in a company called Mediatrix. Beginning in March 2016, Mediatrix accepted money from clients and After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined * unanimously to honor the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.  Appellate Case: 25-1001 Document: 74-1 Date Filed: 04/09/2026 Page: 2 invested it in the foreign currency exchange (forex) market. Mr. Sewall’s partners were Michael Stewart and Michael Young. Mr. Young’s primary role was marketing, i.e., bringing in new investors. Mr. Stewart’s primary role was operations (e.g., managing banking relationships), but he also participated to some degree in marketing. Mr. Sewall’s primary role was trading, especially through a proprietary algorithm he developed. To actually send trades to the market, Mediatrix worked through a specialized broker named Divisa, later named Equiti. As will become important below, Equiti would not necessarily execute every requested trade. It imposed limits on how large of a position a client could take within a given amount of time, and it would reject trades that exceeded those limits. Mediatrix made money by taking a percentage of the upside when it made a profitable trade. On top of that, Messrs. Sewall, Stewart, and Young established a brokerage named Blue Isle to hold client funds, and that brokerage charged a small markup on every trade, whether winning or losing. Messrs. Sewall, Stewart, and Young therefore profited both through Mediatrix’s cut of the winning trades and Blue Isle’s markups. For purposes of this order and judgment, we will refer to Mediatrix and Blue Isle collectively as “Mediatrix.” In September 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) froze Mediatrix’s assets on suspicion of fraud. In February 2021, a grand jury indicted Mr. Sewall (along with Mr. Stewart) on the wire fraud and conspiracy counts previously mentioned. In a separate action, Mr. Young pleaded guilty to one count of