On 24 August, CFTC filed enforcement on forex trading pool fraud.
- Thomas Lanzana, Nikolay Masanko, Blackbox Pulse, White Cloud Mountain LLC.
- As solicited customers to their foreign currency derivatives (forex) trading pools.
Alleged Violations
- Charged for fraud, misappropriatng customer funds, and registration violations.
- Defendants solicited about $700k from 31 customers to invest in their FX pools.
- Masanko misrepresented that Lanzana was successful FX trader, when was not.
- Lanzana lost over $12k trading forex in his personal accounts from 2013-2017.
- Defendants sent false monthly statements and also posted them to the website.
- Sent false tax documents to customers and reported earnings that did not exist.
- CFTC alleged Lanzana misappropriated approximately $350k of customer funds.
- Lanzana used some of the funds in Ponzi scheme and to pay personal expenses.
- Included luxury car, jewelry retailers, golf expenses, among others they alleged.
Sanctions
- Both are unregistered, and prohibited from destroying or concealing their books.
- Court hearing scheduled for Sep. on motion seeking preliminary injunction order.
