WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A California man has been charged with operating a commodity pool Ponzi scheme that fraudulently solicited and accepted at least $670,000 from 17 people.
Judge Barbara S. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a default judgment and permanent injunction last week against Marc Perlman of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and his firm iGlobal Strategic Management LLC.
According to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Perlman's scheme mostly solicited from the deaf community.
The order found Perlman and iGlobal violated anti-fraud requirements of the Commodity Exchange Act. As a result a permanent trading and registration bans was imposed.
Required in the order, Perlman and iGlobal will jointly pay a civil monetary penalty of $1,794,537 and restitution of $598,179.
Directly and on behalf of iGlobal, Perlman made material misrepresentations and deceptive statements where he claimed profits were earning when in actuality iGlobal was seeing losses. In some cases where profits were seen, Perlman exaggerated the figures, according to the order.
Perlman solicited individuals to trade leveraged off-exchange foreign currency contracts (forex). Perlman told certain investors their funds would be invested in forex. However the CTFC found no more than about $305,000 was invested.
Perlman told investors the funds were transferred to trading accounts and nearly all of the funds were lost in trading, the order found.
At least $365,000 of iGlobal investor funds were misappropriated to make payments of fictitious profits, for cash withdrawals and personal expenses including electronics, groceries, restaurants, and to pay utility bills and rent at Perlman's personal residence.
Ponzi scheme targeted deaf people
