May 8, 2018

The CFTC announced that Judge Esther Salas of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey has entered an Order of default judgment and permanent injunction against Alcibiades Cifuentes (Cifuentes) and Jennifer Wee Cifuentes (Wee), both of West New York, New Jersey, and their corporate entity, Cifuentes Fund Management, LLC (collectively, Defendants). The Order, entered on April 20, 2018, finds that from at least April 2013 through March 2015, the Defendants devised a sham commodity pool trading in off-exchange foreign currency (forex) contracts. To solicit pool participants to transfer funds to them, the Defendants made false statements, fabricated account documents, and established a practice, or “demo,” forex trading account that involved no actual funds and posed no risk of loss. The Defendants posted “profitable” trades from the demo account online and falsely represented them to be the Defendants’ actual trades, without disclosing that the demo account had sustained “losses” exceeding $5 million. CFTC