{"id":17868,"date":"2014-06-19T23:38:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T21:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/?p=17868"},"modified":"2014-06-19T23:38:46","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T21:38:46","slug":"us-cftc-fines-44-million-for-fraud-and-misappropriation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/us-cftc-fines-44-million-for-fraud-and-misappropriation\/","title":{"rendered":"US CFTC Fines 44 Million for Fraud and Misappropriation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission fines Commodity Trading Companies for Pool Fraud and Misappropriation. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

CFTC release: \u00a0Federal Court in Utah Imposes over $44 Million in Sanctions against Robert Andres and His Company, Winsome Investment Trust, and Robert Holloway and His Company, US Ventures, for Commodity Pool Fraud and Misappropriation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Utah Filed Parallel Criminal Actions against Andres and Holloway<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Washington, DC<\/b> \u2014 The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) obtained a federal court Order requiring Defendants Robert J. Andres<\/b> of Houston, Texas, his company, Winsome Investment Trust<\/b> (Winsome), Robert L. Holloway<\/b> of San Diego, California, and his company US Ventures LC<\/b> (USV), to pay a civil monetary penalty of $32,370,000 and restitution for defrauded customers totaling $12 million. The court\u2019s Order also imposes permanent trading and registration bans against Andres, Winsome, Holloway, and USV and prohibits them from violating provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act, as charged.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The default judgment Order stems from a CFTC civil enforcement action filed on January 24, 2011, that charged the Defendants with fraud in the operation of a commodity futures pool (see CFTC Press Release 5976-11<\/span><\/a>). The Order (see Related Link) was entered by the Honorable Bruce S. Jenkins of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah on June 6, 2014.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Specifically, the Order finds that:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 From at least May 2005 through November 2008, Andres and Winsome fraudulently solicited and accepted at least $50.2 million from at least 243 individuals to invest in a commodity futures pool operated by Holloway and USV.\u00a0 In their solicitations, Andres and Winsome falsely claimed a successful track record and guaranteed the return of participants\u2019 principal and profits; however, contrary to Andres\u2019s and Winsome\u2019s claims of consistently profitable trading, USV\u2019s and Holloway\u2019s futures trading was not successful, sustaining overall net losses of approximately $10.7 million.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 The Defendants allegedly traded only a portion of Winsome\u2019s pool\u2019s funds and misappropriated the majority of participant funds to pay purported \u201cprofits\u201d to pool participants in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme, to provide money to Andres\u2019 wife, and to invest in various unrelated and undisclosed businesses, including using $4.2 million of participant funds to purchase an aerospace consulting business.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Holloway used participant funds to pay personal and unrelated business expenses, and to pay for houses, cars, home furnishings, jewelry, lawn and maid services, and credit card bills in the name of his wife.\u00a0 Holloway also used participant funds to finance his wife\u2019s eBay business, Alcoy Enterprises, LLC.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Andres and Holloway attempted to conceal the fraud by directing employees to falsify participants\u2019 account records and by providing e-mailed account statements to participants falsely representing that Holloway profitably traded pool funds -\u2013 sustaining virtually no losses during the relevant period.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a parallel criminal actions brought by the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Utah, Andres was indicted on five counts of wire fraud, and Holloway was indicted on four counts of wire fraud and one count of making and filing a false income tax return. Holloway\u2019s trial date is currently set for July 8, 2014. Andres pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, and he is scheduled to be sentenced on August 20, 2014.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The CFTC appreciates the assistance of the Comisi\u00f3n Nacional del Mercado de Valores (Spain), the Dubai Financial Services Authority, and the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Commodity<\/a>
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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission fines Commodity Trading Companies for Pool Fraud and Misappropriation. \u00a0 CFTC release: \u00a0Federal Court in Utah Imposes over $44 Million in Sanctions against Robert Andres and His Company, Winsome Investment Trust, and Robert Holloway … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-finance"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17871,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17868\/revisions\/17871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}