The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has received a court order to impose a fine of $100,000 against BareIt Media LLC, operated as SignalPush, a provider of binary options signals, and its owner, Ryan Masten. The order includes a permanent injunction and equitable relief.

CFTC Fines SignalPush

Announced yesterday (Tuesday), the order from the US District Court for the Western District of Texas includes a permanent injunction order against the defendants from operating as commodity trading advisors (CTA) or associated persons (AP) of a CTA. They first need to register with the CFTC .

“According to the order, Masten controlled BareIt Media and solicited customers and prospective customers to sign up for the SignalPush service. During this time, BareIt Media was not registered as a CTA, and Masten was not registered as an AP of BareIt Media,” the CFTC stated.

SignalPush offered trade signals to binary options traders and provided software to automate trading. The platform operated from about 1 May 2013 for four years.

The recent court order came as a part of another enforcement action of the CFTC that was brought in September 2020. Then, the American agency charged six companies and four individuals, including three brothers, for running a fraudulent binary options trading scheme that received over $165 million. The name of SignalPush and another platform surfaced in that lawsuit as they were offshore entities owned and controlled by one of the primary accused.

Binary Options – A Simple but Controversial Instrument

Binary options are time-bound derivatives instruments that allow traders to speculate on the movement of the underlying asset. Traders can only speculate if the price will go up or down in a limited period of time, which ranges from seconds to hours, days in some cases, thus the name binary options.

Previously, the simplicity of binary options made them very popular among novice traders. However, the industry soon attracted fraudsters who siphoned off customers’ money. Soon, several regulators in Europe and Israel banned binary options. Australia was the most recent country to impose a temporary ban on binary options. However, the United States still allows binary options under strict regulations.