The legal action – filed in the Southern District of Texas – sought to impose a permanent ban and injunction on the defendants from registering with the CFTC and trading commodity interests. The case dates back to August 2016, whose scheme, dubbed Global Trading Club (GTC), ran until October 2017 by the defendants and others. The CFTC detailed that the firm employed so-called “master traders” who claimed to have years of experience trading cryptos.
“The defendants further falsely represented that customer earnings would increase based on the amount of their deposit and that GTC would award bonuses to customers who referred others to the GTC business. Additionally, to conceal their fraud, the defendants caused misleading trading statements to be posted online,” the CFTC said. Moreover, the authority commented that at least 27 individuals deposited almost $989,000 with one or more scheme representatives.
Penalties to Be Paid
“The orders also require the defendants to pay $989,550 in restitution, Mayco Alexis Maldonado Garcia to pay a civil monetary penalty of $400,000, and Cesar Castaneda and Joel Castaneda Garcia to each pay a civil monetary penalty of $180,000,” the complaint added. Maura Viehmeyer, Erica Bodin, James A. Garcia, Aimee Latimer-Zayets, and Rick Glaser were in charge of the case’s investigation.
In July, the CFTC filed a civil enforcement action against three individuals allegedly involved in a multimillionaire commodities fraud scheme. The financial authority filed charges before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Robert Jeffrey Johnson, Kathleen Hook, Ross Baldwin, Precious Commodities, Inc. (PCI), National Coin Broker, Inc. (NCB), and NCB Wholesale Co. (NCBWC), and they are all from Florida.
