Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced filling an enforcement action in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Casper Mikkelsen. Resident of Denmark and also known as “Carsten Nielsen,” “Brian Thomson,” “Thomas Jensen” and “Casper Muller,” Mikkelsen was charged with engaging in a $1.5 million foreign currency fraud scheme and registration violations.
CFTC Director of Enforcement James McDonald said:
This complaint reaffirms our steadfast commitment to working in parallel with foreign authorities to protect participants in our markets and hold fraudsters accountable wherever in the world they are located.
The CFTC complaint alleges that Mikkelsen engaged in fraudulent scheme to obtain at least $1.5 million from over 100 individuals and entities by getting them to invest with a supposed company called GNTFX to trade retail leveraged or margined forex. The scheme has been running at least since 2015. The complains claims that Mikkelsen misappropriated some of its client’s funds. Most clients deposited their funds into bank accounts in the US and while others into an overseas account and/or with an American ecommerce company for the purpose of trading forex. The client funds were withdrawn from the bank accounts by Mikkelsen through his debit card, as well as transferred from the US bank accounts to an overseas bank. From there they were transferred to a Bitcoin address for Mikkelsen’s benefit. Mikkelsen then used the money to pay certain clients purported forex trading profits as is typical in Ponzi schemed.
CFTC’s complaint adds that Mikkelsen was required to register as a commodity trading advisor but failed to do so.
The Commission seeks full restitution to defrauded clients, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, permanent registration and trading bans and a permanent injunction against violations of the federal commodities laws.
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