The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced on Friday that it filed a civil enforcement action against Storm Bryant, Elijah Bryant, III, CapitalStorm, LLC, GenerationBlack, LLC and NCome, LLC, for their involvement in a $1.05 million fraudulent Forex scheme. According to the press release, the North Carolina companies and their owners are accused of fraudulent solicitation, misappropriation and registration violations.
The complaint, filed before the US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, alleges that from March 2018 through to the present, Storm Bryant and Elijah Bryant III, individually and through CapitalStorm LLC, Generationblack LLC and Ncome LLC, have fraudulently asked non-eligible contract participant clients to participate in forex transactions.
“The defendants received approximately $1.05 million from approximately 94 clients during the relevant period, all of which the defendants misappropriated. Approximately $50,870 was sent back to clients as purported Forex Trading ‘profits’ in the nature of a Ponzi scheme,” the CFTC noted. Moreover, the authority clarifies that the firms were not licensed as commodity trading advisors (CTA), incurring an illicit manoeuvre.
More Details on the Case
“When the Bryants successfully induced non-ECP, retail clients to send them funds, the Bryants misappropriated the funds by receiving them or moving them into accounts held by Storm and/or Elijah Bryant in their own names and using the funds to purchase jewelry, rent homes, European travel and fund the Bryants’ personal trading accounts,” the US CFTC added. That said, the watchdog asks for full restitution to victims, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, permanent registration and trading bans and a permanent injunction against future violations.
Recently, the US CFTC busted a massive forex and Bitcoin trading racket and brought civil enforcement charges against 8 individuals who were running the scheme. As Finance Magnates reported, they operated a platform called Prime FX and misappropriated over $1.2 million in clients’ funds. The mastermind of the fraudulent scheme is a Nigerian named Uduakobong Udo Inyangudo a/k/a Alexander Uti Bassey.
