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