Whistleblower Group

March 15, 2016

The CFTC announced that a federal district court has unsealed a civil complaint the CFTC filed with the Northern District of Illinois on February 2, 2016, against two foreign web-based binary options firms, Vault Options, Ltd. and Global Trader 365, both Israeli web-based companies. The CFTC’s complaint alleges that the two firms unlawfully solicited and accepted more than $1 million from at least 50 U.S. customers to trade off-exchange binary options contracts, defrauded those customers, and operated as unregistered Futures Commission Merchants.  CFTC

March 15, 2016

National retailer Lord & Taylor has agreed to settle FTC charges that it deceived consumers by paying for native advertisements, including a seemingly objective article in the online publication Nylon and a Nylon Instagram post, without disclosing that the posts actually were paid promotions for the company’s 2015 Design Lab clothing collection. FTC

March 14, 2016

The CFTC ordered Florida-based IBFX, Inc. to pay a $1 million penalty for failing to meet capital requirements, failing to report minimum net capital violations on time, supervisory failures, and violating a previous CFTC order.  CFTC

March 10, 2016

Two former derivatives traders at Rabobank Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A. (Rabobank) were sentenced to prison for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rates (LIBOR) for the U.S. Dollar (USD) and Japanese Yen (JPY), benchmark interest rates to which trillions of dollars in interest rate contracts were tied.  Anthony Allen, the bank’s former global head of liquidity and finance in London, was sentenced to 24 months and Anthony Conti, a former senior trader on the bank’s money markets desk in London, was sentenced to 12 months.  DOJ