A citizen of the United States, 52-year-old David Butler, is facing up to 20 years in prison for a binary options fraud of over $2.9 million.
The US Department of Justice disclosed on Wednesday that Butler pleaded guilty to the fraud before US District Judge Joanna Seybert at a federal court in Central Islip in New York.
Finance Magnates reports that Butler, who is the operator of the binary options companies, SpotFN and Binary FN, was arrested in April for wire fraud.
He was extradited from Costa Rica to the United States in July.
According to the statement, Butler and his co-conspirators defrauded investors of more than $2.9 million by using computer software to manipulate the binary options data of the companies they operated to their advantage.
Between January 2011 and October 2016, Butler and his accomplices were said to have operated binary options firms SpotFN, Binary FN and Janus Options, among others.
They ran the companies from Glen Cove in New York and from Costa Rica and Kosovo, the statement said.
Through the companies, Butler and his accomplices promised to pay their investors a predetermined profit based on particular outcomes in the securities, currencies and other markets.
“At no time did Butler or any other employee of the binary options companies inform the investors that the binary options that they had purchased from the binary options companies could be manipulated to the investors’ disadvantage," the Department of Justice explained.
"As a result of their deception, Butler and his co-conspirators stole more than $2.9 million from investors,” the executive department added.
Latest Fraud Cases
Last week, Ivars Auzin was extradited to the United States following charges by the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Auzins fleeced investors of over $7 million through his company, Auzins Entities.
Also, Finance Magnates reported last week that a group of dual citizens of Israeli and French nationality defrauded French social services of millions of euros through false claims and stolen identities perpetrated during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The suspects were said to have laundered the money in the form of cryptocurrencies.
Meanwhile, in July, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission charged Chris Marco, a resident of Western Australia, with 50 counts of fraud for defrauding nine investors of approximately $36.5 million.
