“He packed up and moved out” – CFTC cannot find Bitcoin, binary options fraudster
Dillon Michael Dean, who is accused on several counts of fraud by the CFTC, is attempting to evade service by concealing his whereabouts.
The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is having hard time locating one of the defendants in a fraud case involving Bitcoin and binary options. Dillon Michael Dean, who stands accused of misappropriation of more than $1 million from investors, is trying to evade service by concealing his whereabouts, the Commission stated in a set of filings with the New York Eastern District Court.
The documents, submitted on March 20, 2018, tell of CFTC’s efforts to serve the defendant – these efforts include 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.”
CFTC now asks the Court for an order permitting alternative service of the summons and complaint upon Dean or for an order declaring service of the summons and complaint upon Dean to have been effectively made.
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 numerous clauses of the the Commodity Exchange Act and the Commission Regulations. The CFTC says that from approximately 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.
During the Relevant Period, TEH also failed to register with the Commission as a commodity pool operator, and Dean failed to register with the Commission as an associated person of a CPO.
Dean and other representatives of TEH have launched 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, professing expertise and consistent results in binary options trading.
The case is captioned Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Dean et al (2:18-cv-00345).
