The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that a Texas district court ordered Abner Alejandro Tinoco and his company, Kikit & Mess Investments, to pay $31m after being found guilty of forex and cryptocurrency fraud.
CFTC Wins Case, Tinoco And Kikit & Mess Fined $31m
In a press statement dated 26 July 2024, the CFTC said Tinoco and his company must “jointly and severally” pay restitution of more than $6.2m to 199 defrauded customers and just under $6.3m in disgorgement “with dollar-for-dollar credit for any restitution payments to victims”. The civil monetary penalty is more than $18.7m.
The court also banned Tinoco and his company from trading in any CFTC-regulated market. According to this media release, the CFTC initiated its case against Tinoco and Kikit & Mess at the end of September 2021.
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An investigation, and the ensuing legal proceedings, discovered that the defendants ran a fraudulent scheme in September 2020. They took $7.2m in investment funds from one group of investors to pay another group and referred to these payments as “investment profits”. The CFTC said it resembled a Ponzi scheme and noted:
The order found the defendants did not invest their clients’ funds as represented and instead used them to pay Tinoco’s personal expenses including the travel costs for chartering a private jet, the purchase of a luxury mansion and other real estate, and the purchase or lease of luxury automobiles.
Several CFTC-issued warnings, which include fraud advisories and articles and a forex fraud advisory, aim to inform and caution investors about these types of schemes.
