CFTC gets closer to obtaining default judgement against Unique Forex, Blackbox Pulse, White Cloud Mountain
A clerk at the New Jersey District Court has approved the entry of default as to the defendants for failure to plead or otherwise defend in a Forex fraud case.
The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has moved closer to obtaining a default judgement against the defendants in a Forex fraud case at the New Jersey District Court. The case, captioned Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Lanzana d/b/a Unique Forex et al, targets Thomas Lanzana, individually and doing business as Unique Forex, Nikolay Masanko, Blackbox Pulse, LLC and White Cloud Mountain, LLC.
On Tuesday, January 30, 2018, a clerk has approved the entry of default against the defendants for their failure to plead or otherwise defend themselves in the case.
The document is issued in response to a motion filed by the CFTC in October 2017. The clerk’s certificate of default is considered as a necessary step before a default judgement is issued by the Court. A default judgment would be a binding judgment in favor of the plaintiff given that the defendant has not responded to a summons or has failed to appear before a court of law. The failure to take action is the default.
According to the CFTC Complaint, from at least 2013 to the present, through social media, websites, and word of mouth, Lanzana presented himself as a successful Forex trader to solicit and accept customer funds for the purpose of trading Forex at Blackbox Pulse or Unique Forex. His emails to customers featured account statements and links to YouTube videos showing FX trades that were never made. In reality, Lanzana did not use all of the customer funds he accepted to trade Forex, but instead misappropriated a portion of those funds to pay other customers who requested the return of their funds, in the manner of a Ponzi scheme, and for his own personal use and benefit.
By at least 2014, Masanko, who had previously worked with Lanzana as a broker at various firms registered with FINRA in the late 1990s and early 2000s, started referring friends and family members (including his own parents) to Unique Forex. For the customers he solicited, Masanko received a percentage of the performance fees that Lanzana charged.
On top of that, Lanzana made misleading statements about Blackbox Pulse and Unique Forex accounts at Forex Capital Markets LLC (FXCM), which was registered with the CFTC as a retail foreign exchange dealer until March 2017. These statements made it appear as if Blackbox Pulse and Unique Forex traded an account worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at FXCM. In fact, no account in the name of “Blackbox Pulse, LLC” and/or “Unique Forex” exists at FXCM.
Since approximately 2016, Lanzana has stopped returning all funds to customers who have requested the withdrawal of their funds, and has instead sought to keep customer funds via a series of misrepresentations and false promises.
The CFTC accuses the defendants of: Fraud in Connection with Forex; Manipulative or Deceptive Device, Scheme, or Artifice to Defraud; Fraud by a Commodity Pool Operator and an Associated Person of a Commodity Pool Operator; Failure to register as a Commodity Pool Operator; Failure to register as an AP of a Commodity Pool Operator; and Prohibited Activities of a Commodity Pool Operator.
