Federal Court Orders Texas Forex Fraud Ztegrity and Its Operator to Pay over $940,000

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas entered a consent order on October 7 for a permanent injunction, monetary sanctions, and equitable relief against Troy Mason of Grand Prairie, Texas, and his company, Ztegrity, Inc., formerly based in Houston, Texas.

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The order requires Mason and Ztegrity to pay $643,570 in restitution to victims and to pay a $300,000 civil monetary penalty. The order also permanently prohibits the defendants from further violations of the CEA and CFTC regulations, as charged, and imposes permanent registration and trading bans.

The order finds that from approximately October 2019 to June 2021, the defendants used various websites and social media platforms to fraudulently market their forex trading pool as a version of a savings account that offered a greater yield with similarly low or no risk. The defendants called this forex trading pool "The Black Club" and "The Forex Savings Club," which their website claimed had received over $460,000 from 411 participants.

The order further finds the defendants induced participation in their forex trading pool by falsely claiming to "guarantee" to repay participants the funds they contributed to their individual "Forex Savings Accounts" and falsely offered participants "with a 100% certainty" portions of the "substantial profit[s]" to be generated using participants' pooled funds to trade forex. In truth, the defendants knew or recklessly failed to appreciate that no forex trader can guarantee profitable trading, or the avoidance of losses required to guarantee all participants' contributions, and knew, but failed to inform participants, they had no U.S.-based forex trading accounts.

Finally, the order finds the defendants illegally operated their commodity pool by failing to register as commodity pool operators, in violation of the CEA and CFTC regulations.