The fraudster is already serving his sentence and funds are nowhere to be found
The US regulator CFTC has issued a statement regarding a federal court order for $17 mln that it obtained against California resident Lyndon Parrilla. He and his company Green Tree Capital have defrauded over 50 customers of over $4 mln. The court order requires him to pay $4.2 mln to defrauded customers, a disgorgement of $3.3 mln and a further $10 mln for a civil monetary penalty.
Needless to say, he is banned from trading and prohibited further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Mr. Parrilla has already been found guilty in a separate criminal case last November, when he was sentenced to 8 years in jail. Since he is currently serving his sentence, the question remains as to how he will acquire the funds needed to pay these penalties.
The scheme that he pulled off and admitted to involved more than 50 customers who have “invested” more than $4 mln with his company Green Tree Capital for trading on the foreign exchange markets. In reality about 80% of the funds have never been traded and losses were registered on the remaining amount. The vast amount of the funds were thrown for personal expenses including entertainment, Las Vegas casinos and automobiles and clothing.
To conceal the fraud Mr. Parrilla has emailed false account statements to customers demonstrating a set of fabricated results that showed that investors were actually making money through dealings in the forex market.
According to the Justice Department, earlier last year the prosecution has seized a Mercedes S63. It remains unclear what other assets if any will be used to reimburse customers, but sadly, the most likely outcome is that most of the funds would never be recovered.
For the full text of the press release visit CFTC’s website.
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