A US federal court ordered Jamal Y Vance and his company, All City Investments (All City), to pay a total of $770,000 in fines this Wednesday. The order comes almost two years after the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC ), a US regulator, launched a civil enforcement complaint against Vance and his firm.

That initial complaint was based on a range of alleged misbehavior on the part of Vance. The CFTC noted that Vance did not register with them as a commodity trading adviser (CTA), despite needing to do so to run All City which provided off-Exchange FX investment services.

Bad service

The CFTC's approval was needed as Vance and other All City employees solicited customers on their website, enticing them to set up FX trading accounts that would be managed by Vance and All City. More dubiously, the firm encouraged clients to sign a limited power of attorney that enabled Vance and All City to act as their trading agent and hence control their FX trading accounts.

All City may have also used fake testimonials on its website and, according to the CFTC, it did use fake advertising to lure in clients. The firm displayed a graph on their website that showed the firm’s investments had grown in value by 2,675.10 percent in two years.

All City also wrote that, in the same two year period, they had made 444 investments. Of those 444 investments, 99.55 percent were listed as ‘profit trades.’

As a result of these different actions, Judge Alison Nathan, who was presiding over Vance’s case, entered a consent order against Vance that will mean he has to pay $100,000. Nathan also entered a default judgment against All City that will see the company being forced to pay $670,912.