CFTC secures another default order in binary options, bitcoin fraud case

Maria Nikolova

The CFTC secures an entry of default against The Entrepreneurs Headquarters Limited, an entity allegedly responsible for a $1.1 million fraudulent scheme.

The New York Eastern District Court has agreed with a request by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and has issued an entry of default against The Entrepreneurs Headquarters Limited (TEH), an entity alleged to be at the heart of a $1.1 million bitcoin and binary options fraudulent scheme.

The Clerk’s order says: “It appearing from the docket maintained in this action that defendant The Entrepreneurs Headquarters Limited has failed to appear or otherwise defend this action, the default of defendant The Entrepreneurs Headquarters Limited is hereby noted pursuant to Rule 55a of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure”.

The CFTC has already pushed for a default order against Dillon Michael Dean, at the helm of the scheme. Dean, alike TEH, has been out of reach in the face of the CFTC attempts to contact him. There had been visits to his addresses in Colorado, emails and phone messages, as well as calls. The regulator even resorted to a skip trace performed on March 15, 2018, using CLEAR, an online investigative platform commonly utilized by law enforcement agencies and operated by Thomson Reuters. But it revealed no further address, email, or telephone information for Dean.

A Deputy with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office has spoken with a woman who identified herself as Christina Kielnecker who stated that Dean no longer lived at the residence. She stated that “he packed up and moved his belongings out of the residence, after all the stuff started coming down.”

In its Complaint, filed with the New York Eastern District Court on January 18, 2018, the CFTC charges Dean and his company The Entrepreneurs Headquarters Limited (TEH) of violating several clauses of the Commodity Exchange Act and the Commission Regulations. The CFTC says that from around April 2017 through the present the defendants engaged in a fraudulent scheme to solicit at least $1.1 million worth of Bitcoin from more than 600 members of the public to participate in a pooled investment vehicle for trading commodity interests.

TEH has also failed to register with the Commission as a commodity pool operator, and Dean has failed to register with the Commission as an associated person of a CPO.

In addition to TEH, Dean and other representatives of this entity have established another “trading venture” called Real Trade Profits (RTP), which solicits new customers in a manner very similar to TEH—seeking investments in Bitcoin for a pooled investment, promising expertise and consistent results in binary options trading.

The case is captioned Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Dean et al (2:18-cv-00345).

Read this next

Retail FX

Prop firm The Funded Trader shuts down, claims relaunch in April

Prop trading firm The Funded Trader has ceased all operations, with claims for a relaunch in the near future.

Digital Assets

Ethereum-Based Tokenized Real Estate Platform USP Launches On Republic

How This Californian Startup Is Revolutionizing Real Estate Investment through Ethereum-Based Tokenization.

Digital Assets

Sui Spikes in Weekly DEX Volume, Joins Top 10 of All Blockchains

March DEX volume on Sui stands at over $2.88B – up more than 49% from February – with decentralized exchange Cetus and wholesale liquidity layer DeepBook leading.

Digital Assets

Prisma Finance suffers $10 million crypto exploit, attack ongoing

Liquid staking protocol Prisma Finance fell victim to a security exploit on March 28, resulting in nearly $10 million in Prisma mkUSD and wrapped stETH being stolen by hackers.

Digital Assets

Masa and LayerZero: Bridging Blockchains for Data Sovereignty

Masa Network is poised to revolutionize the personal data landscape with its upcoming launch as a cross-chain platform, making it accessible on a variety of blockchains right from the start.

Digital Assets

Big Time Generates over $100M in Revenue since Preseason

Innovative game developer Big Time Studios announces that its highly anticipated free-to-play multiplayer action/MMO RPG Big Time, has generated $100M in revenue. According to the team, players transacted a total volume of over $230M, without selling a single token.

Digital Assets

Centralized exchanges are 10 times more popular than DEXs in Western Europe

Western European traders are found to prefer centralized exchanges over decentralized ones as CEX traffic outpaces DEXs by a factor of ten.

Market News

Stock Market Analysis: Is NVDA Losing Its Leadership?

Since the beginning of the week, the S&P 500 Index (US500) has seen a modest increase of about 0.58%, whereas NVDA’s share price has experienced a decline of approximately 3.8%. This recent divergence raises concerns among Nvidia stock investors — could it signify a loss of NVDA’s market leadership?

Industry News

ESG: Australian regulator wins first greenwashing court case against Vanguard

Vanguard admitted that a notable portion of the securities within both the Index and the Fund did not undergo the promised ESG scrutiny.

<