The legal counsel of the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) has requested that the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York enter default against Daniel Winston LaMarco and his company, GDLogix Inc., which have been charged with off-exchange foreign currency derivatives (Forex ) fraud.
In a document seen by Finance Magnates and dated on the 1st of July 2020, Danielle E. Karst, the attorney for the CFTC, submitted a motion for certificates of default against the defendants in this case.
Namely, the CFTC said that LaMarco and GDLogix continually failed to answer or otherwise move with the CFTC’s Complaint, which was made back in 2017. In particular, the document outlines that the two defendants have been given numerous extensions to submit their answer to the complaint.
By Electronic Order dated on the 30th of June 2020, the Court ordered the CFTC to file a request for certificates of default against the Defendants by July 10, 2020. As of the time this document was submitted, neither of the defendants had answered or responded to the regulator’s complaint, the regulator said.
CFTC charged LaMarco and GDLogix Inc in 2017
As Finance Magnates reported, in July of 2017 the regulator filed a civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York against LaMarco and GDLogix Inc.
Specifically, the regulator charged them with FX fraud, commodity pool fraud, and failure to register with the CFTC as required. As part of this fraud, the regulator alleges that LaMarco fraudulently solicited and accepted nearly $1.5 million from individuals.
In particular, the regulator said that from January 2011 through to March of 2016, LaMarco solicited $1,492,650 from 13 individuals, some of which were his friends and acquaintances.
This money was given to LaMarco under the impression it would be used to trade off-exchange leveraged or margined retail derivatives forex contracts in a commodity pool operated by the Defendants.
“LaMarco solicited pool participants by word-of-mouth, by email, by the Internet, by the use of mails, and/or other means, according to the Complaint. Further, as alleged, LaMarco solicited pool participants by falsely representing to them the purported success of his personal investments in Forex Trading and the purported safety of his forex investment strategy. All of these representations were material and false, the Complaint alleges,” the watchdog said in its statement at the time.
