Apex Trader Funding sued one of its own customers on July 29, 2026, in federal court in New Jersey, alleging that a trader the filing names as Tan submitted thousands of card chargebacks in bad faith. The firm brings claims for breach of contract and for interference with its payment-processor agreements. The document available is Apex’s own complaint, so nothing in it has been tested or decided.
What Apex filed
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey as case 2:26-cv-09571-SDW-JSA. It alleges thousands of chargebacks made in bad faith and asks the court for relief on two theories: breach of contract, and tortious interference with existing contracts, meaning Apex’s own agreements with the companies that process its card payments. The verification at the end of the complaint is signed by John Mark Skelton as chief executive officer of Apex. Apex also states that Tan used its services for years and collected rewards, the firm’s term for payouts from its simulated funded accounts, totaling approximately $180,000. (U.S. District Court, M.D. Fla., July 29, 2026)
Chargebacks and payment processing
A chargeback is a card payment that the cardholder’s bank reverses after the customer disputes it with the bank rather than with the merchant. Evaluations at futures prop firms are paid services with simulated trading, and the fees and monthly subscriptions behind them are ordinary card charges, which puts a firm’s whole revenue line inside the card networks.
That is the exposure Apex describes. The chargebacks, it says, “jeopardized Apex’s relationships with its payment processors,” and it adds that high chargeback levels bring scrutiny, higher fees and restrictions on its ability to process payments at all. (U.S. District Court, M.D. Fla., July 29, 2026)
What the filing does not settle
Every figure and characterization above comes from one side. The copy of the complaint reviewed here was filed as an exhibit on the docket of a separate case in federal court in Florida, and it carries no response from the trader. Whether the disputed charges were valid, what Apex is owed, if anything, and whether the roughly $180,000 in rewards is itself contested are all open.
