Archive

January 20, 2016

The CFTC announced that it filed a civil enforcement action charging Kevin J. Davis of Ponca City, Oklahoma with acting as an unregistered commodity pool operator, failing to operate his commodity pool as a separate legal entity, accepting funds from pool participants in his own name, and commingling pool participants’ funds with his own.  CFTC

January 13, 2016

Otkritie Capital International, Ltd., a London-based financial services company, agreed to pay a $140,000 penalty to settle charges that it violated CFTC Regulation 30.4 by permitting two of its U.S. customers to trade futures and options in foreign markets while not registered as a futures commission merchant.  CFTC

January 13, 2016

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered a default judgement order against Nikolai S. Battoo, BC Capital Group S.A., BC Capital Group International Limited, and BC Capital Group Holdings S.A. on charges that they operated a global commodities futures and option fraud scheme, requiring the defendants to pay $294,246,741 in restitution, a $147 million civil penalty, and to disgorge $49 million received as ill-gotten gains.  CFTC

January 7, 2016

The CFTC filed a complaint against Ghassan Tawachi (a/k/a Marco Tawachi) and his firm, Intelligent Trades, LLC, alleging the defendants fraudulently marketed commodity futures trading software, under which Tawachi indirectly controlled the trading of his customers’ commodity futures accounts and collected substantial fees for the use of his trading software. In all, the defendants allegedly defrauded clients of over $479,755.  CFTC

December 28, 2015

The CFPB filed a proposed consent order in the Northern District of Georgia that would require Frederick J. Hanna & Associates and its principal partners to pay $3.1 million to the Bureau’s Civil Penalty Fund and bar them from illegal debt-collection practices. The CFPB’s complaint charges the firm with intimidating consumers with deceptive court filings and introducing faulty or unsubstantiated evidence in court. CFPB

December 22, 2015

Participants in an alleged credit card “laundering” scheme have agreed to settle FTC charges that they illegally helped provide access to payment networks, thereby enabling scammers to place bogus charges on consumers’ credit cards. According to the FTC’s complaint, PayBasics, Todd Hatch and Jimmy Shin helped the defendants behind the Tax Club fraud to open and maintain merchant accounts used to process credit card payments for sales made by a number of different third-party scammers. The defendants in the Tax Club work at home scheme settled FTC charges last year. FTC

December 18, 2015

J.P. Morgan Chase Bank agreed to pay $100 million -- $40 million as a penalty and $60 million in disgorgement -- to settle allegations that it failed to disclose its preferences for investing client funds in certain investment vehicles.  CFTC

December 17, 2015

The CFPB ordered CarHop, one of the country’s biggest “buy-here, pay-here” auto dealers, and its affiliated financing company, Universal Acceptance Corporation, to cease their illegal activities and pay a $6,465,000 civil penalty for providing damaging, inaccurate consumer information to credit reporting companies. CFPB

December 16, 2015

The CFPB ordered EZCORP, Inc., a small-dollar lender, to refund $7.5 million to 93,000 consumers, pay $3 million in penalties, and stop collection of remaining payday and installment loan debts owed by roughly 130,000 consumers for illegal debt collection practices. The CFPB found that EZCORP collected debts from consumers through unlawful in-person collection visits at their homes or workplaces, risked exposing consumers’ debts to third parties, falsely threatened consumers with litigation for non-payment of debts, and unfairly made multiple electronic withdrawal attempts from consumer accounts, causing mounting bank fees. CFPB

December 7, 2015

The CFPB filed a proposed consent order that would require EOS CCA, a Massachusetts debt collection firm, to overhaul its debt collection practices, refund at least $743,000 to consumers, and pay a $1.85 million civil money penalty for (1) reporting and collecting on old cellphone debt that consumers disputed and EOS CCA did not verify and (2) providing inaccurate information to credit reporting companies about the debt and failing to correct reported information that it had determined was inaccurate. CFPB