The Commodity Futures Trading Commission yesterday revealed that it has entered a restraining order to preserve records and freeze assets controlled by defendants Rajiv Patel (also known as Ravi Patel or Raj Patel) and Bluprint LLC, both based in Florida.
The CFTC filed a complained against the defendants alleging Bluprint and Patel have engaged in fraud. The complaint claims that Bluprint and its owner and managing director defrauded 16 pool participants of $9.8 million from June 2019 to the present. This was achieved through a commodity pool that purported to trade commodity futures and options.
Details of the fraud
The US regulator alleges that defendants misappropriated funds from the pool participants and used them to pay personal expenses and to trade commodity futures and options in personal trading accounts.
The trading was unprofitable and resulted the pool participants ended up losing money. However, the defendants falsely informed them their investments were accruing interest.
According to the CFTC, in order to hide their fraudulent actions, the defendants lied to an introducing broker and to futures commission merchants that held the defendants’ trading accounts and pool participants’ funds.
The CFTC announced that the preliminary injunction hearing was canceled as Patel had died.
The Commission recently brought charged against five individuals and five companies of fraud, misappropriation and registration violations in relation to a fraudulent forex scheme.
