Manhattan Woman Pleads Guilty To Commodities Fraud More Than $23 Million

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-woman-pleads-guilty-manhattan-federal-court-commodities-fraud-connection

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Southern District of New York

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, January 13, 2017

Manhattan Woman Pleads Guilty In Manhattan Federal Court To Commodities Fraud In Connection With Scheme To Defraud Investors Of More Than $23 Million

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that HAENA PARK pled guilty in Manhattan federal court today to commodities fraud. The charge relates to PARK’s scheme to defraud more than 40 individual investors out of more than $23 million. PARK solicited investments for the purpose of trading in a variety of securities and commodities, including off-exchange foreign currency contracts, through the use of false and misleading statements about, among other things, her historical trading performance. PARK was arrested on June 2, 2016, in Manhattan, New York, and pled guilty today before United States District Judge Ronnie Abrams.
(snip)

From September 2009 through June 2016, PARK raised more than $23 million from more than 40 individual investors, purportedly for the purpose of trading in a variety of securities and commodities, including equities, futures, and off-exchange foreign currency (“forex”) transactions, through the use of her firms, Phaetra Capital Management LP and Argenta Group, LLC. In connection with the scheme, PARK made a series of false and misleading representations to investors, including that PARK was an accomplished forex trading adviser earning annualized returns as high as 48.9 percent for her investors. In truth and in fact, PARK was not an accomplished forex trader, her trading was consistently unsuccessful, and the trading results emailed to investors by PARK were false and did not reflect the trading losses actually incurred by PARK. Rather, from September 2009 through June 2016, PARK lost approximately $19.5 million of the $20 million that she traded, including in commissions and fees, principally in highly leveraged futures and forex transactions.

To prevent or forestall redemptions by investors, and to continue to raise money from investors to fund her scheme, PARK generated fictitious account statements, which she sent to investors on a monthly basis. Instead of accurately reporting the trading losses PARK was suffering, the account statements indicated that the investors were making money nearly every month. To hide her trading losses, PARK used new investor funds to pay back other investors in a Ponzi-like fashion. In total, PARK distributed approximately $3 million back to investors from funds deposited by new investors.
(snip)

[Turbineguy]

1. Next stop:

A Cabinet Post.

http://movie-sounds.org/westerns/sound-clips-from-blazing-saddles-1974/maybe-even-get-you-a-cabinet-post-a-cabinet-post

[Warpy]

2. Steal from the poor, nobody in government seems to care

Steal from the rich and it's prison for you.