A civil enforcement action has been recently filed against ZTegrity Inc. and its CEO Troy Mason, according to the latest announcement from the CFTC. The complaint, which has been filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, where both Mason and his company are from, charges the accused with fraudulent solicitation and the failure to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as legally required by the CEA.
The court entered a restraining order earlier on in the month, which froze assets and enforced the preservation of any relevant documents. Amid its legal action, the CFTC are now seeking that complete restitution is paid to defrauded clients, and that the accused disgorge all illegal gains, receive permanent trading and registration bans, pay civil monetary penalties, and receive a permanent ban against any further violations of CEA requirements.
The official complaint released on the CFTC website claims that from around October 2019 up until the past few months, the accused utilised a number of social media platforms and websites in order to falsely market their forex trading pool as an alternative to a savings account which provided a larger yield with minimal risk. Mason and his company named this forex trading pool “The Forex Savings Club,” and “The Black Club”, with a website which falsely claimed had received more than $460,000 from around 411 participants.
The CFTC’s report noted:
The defendants induced participation in their forex trading pool by falsely claiming to ‘guarantee’ to repay participants the funds they contributed to their individual ‘Forex Savings Accounts’ and falsely offered participants ‘with a 100% certainty’ portions of the ‘substantial profit[s]’ to be generated using participants’ pooled funds to trade forex.
The complaint also acknowledges that the defendants either had prior knowledge or absolutely failed to regard that a forex trader cannot guarantee profits and the avoidance of losses. Furthermore, participants were not informed that the defendant had no US-based forex trading accounts.
The report gives thanks to the Texas State Securities Board for assisting in the complaint, and notes that The Division of Enforcement staff members conducting the process included Kyong J. Koh, Tobias Fischer, Peter Haas, Paul G. Hayeck and Luke B. Marsh.
Last month, the CFTC announced charges made against commodity pool operators LJM Partners Ltd and LJM Funds Management Ltd, making its Chief Portfolio Manager, Anish Parvataneni alongside its Chairman Anthony J. Caine accountable.
