CFTC secures $2.6M order against Mark Ramkishun
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York entered an order of final judgment against Mark A. Ramkishun, a former resident of Brooklyn, New York.
The order resolves the CFTC’s January 9 lawsuit against Ramkishun and finds him liable for fraudulently soliciting investments in a purported commodity pool and misappropriating pool participants’ funds.
The court’s order of default judgment and permanent injunction prohibits Ramkishun from engaging in conduct that violates the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), orders him to pay $1,076,758 in restitution and a $1,566,977.07 civil monetary penalty. The penalties imposed by the Court are in line with those sought by the CFTC.
The order also permanently bans Ramkishun from registering with the CFTC and from trading on any registered entity.
In entering this order, the court found Ramkishun, acting as an unregistered commodity pool operator, fraudulently induced individuals in the United States to send him a total of approximately $1.69 million for investment in a supposed commodity pool called Leo Growl LLC.
The court further found in the course of soliciting as well as after receiving pool participant funds, Ramkishun knowingly made fraudulent and material misrepresentations and omitted material facts about the use of those funds and the profits pool participants purportedly earned.
He also fabricated and distributed to pool participants fraudulent account statements showing consistent profits and growing account values based on his trading, when Ramkishun’s trading actually resulted in net trading losses of over $550,000.
The court also found Ramkishun used less than half of the pool participant funds for trading and ultimately misappropriated a substantial portion of the funds for personal expenditures and to make Ponzi-type payments to pool participants using funds provided by other participants.
In addition, the court found Ramkishun failed to operate the pool as a separate entity from himself and commingled his personal funds with pool participant funds in violation of CFTC regulations.