The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that the court entered a consent order permanently banning Mark N. Pyatt from trading commodity futures and retail forex contracts for fraudulently soliciting individuals to place funds in a commodity pool and to misappropriating most of the money he solicited. The court also ordered Pyatt to make restitution in the amount of $255,850.
The court order resolves a CFTC case against Pyatt filed on 10 February 2020. The CFTC’s litigation continues against Pyatt’s company, Winston Reed Investments LLC.
The consent order finds that between April 2017 and February 2019, Pyatt accepted $276,850 from pool participants to trade commodity futures and forex. The US watchdog also discovered that Pyatt misappropriated most of pool participants’ funds for business expenses and personal use, and to make Ponzi-like payments to other pool participants, while using only a fraction of the funds to trade. In addition, despite overall net trading losses, Pyatt sent reports to investors claiming profits of between 18.8% to 86.5% per month.
In a parallel criminal action, Pyatt pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with the scheme. On 27 October 2020, Pyatt was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution to his victims.
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