The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will seek default judgments against Daniel Winston LaMarco and his company, GDLogix Inc. This becomes clear from a status report filed by the regulator in the New York Eastern District Court on December 9, 2021.
Let’s recall that the CFTC charged LaMarco and his company with Forex fraud back in 2017. According to the CFTC’s Complaint, from January 2011 through March 2016, LaMarco fraudulently solicited and accepted $1,492,650 from 13 individuals to trade off-exchange leveraged or margined retail derivatives Forex contracts in a commodity pool operated by the defendants. LaMarco solicited pool participants by word-of-mouth, by email, by the Internet, by the use of mails, and/or other means, according to the Complaint.
Further, as alleged, LaMarco solicited pool participants by falsely representing to them the purported success of his personal investments in forex trading and the purported safety of his Forex investment strategy. All of these representations were material and false, the complaint alleges.
To conceal and perpetuate his fraud, beginning on or about February 2011, LaMarco emailed participants fabricated monthly statements purported to provide the pool’s profits, losses, and net balances of each participant. However, according to the Complaint, all of the information in the monthly statements was false. LaMarco also allegedly misappropriated pool funds, which he spent on personal expenses or lost in unprofitable trading in his personal accounts.
In February 2016, the monthly statements falsely represented to pool participants the total value of the commodity pool had increased to $1,797,126. In reality, however, LaMarco had lost nearly all of pool participants’ funds through unsuccessful trading and by diverting $630,050 of the total principal invested to some participants as purported “profits” in the nature of a “Ponzi” scheme, as alleged.
The CFTC explains that it has diligently prosecuted this case since its inception. Settlement negotiations failed to produce a negotiated resolution of this matter and corporate defendant GDLogix failed to retain counsel as previously ordered by the Court.
According to the latest status report, seen by FX News Group, to date, neither Defendant has filed an Answer to the Complaint. LaMarco has also failed to participate in discovery and defend this matter.
The CFTC requests to proceed with its renewed applications for the Clerk’s entries of default against both defendants, along with a motion for default judgment against both defendants.