INDIVIDUAL AND HIS FIRM TO PAY OVER $19 MILLION IN PENALTIES AND DISGORGEMENT

The following excerpt is from the CFTC website: “Washington, DC - The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) obtained federal court consent orders resolving its remaining claims against defendants Ray M. White and CRW Management LP (CRW) and relief defendants Christopher R. White and Hurricane Motorsports, LLC, all of Mansfield, Texas. The claims arose from a CFTC complaint filed on March 4, 2009, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, charging the defendants with operating a multi-million dollar off-exchange foreign currency Ponzi scheme (see CFTC Press Release 5626-09, March 5, 2009). The relief defendants were named in the lawsuit because they received funds as a result of the defendants’ fraudulent conduct and had no legitimate entitlement to those funds. One consent order, entered on October 5, 2011, requires defendants jointly and severally to pay $9,548,365 in disgorgement and requires Ray White to pay a $9,548,365 civil monetary penalty. An earlier consent order of permanent injunction, entered by the court on October 1, 2009, resolved liability against defendants and permanently barred defendants from engaging in any commodity-related activity and from registering with the CFTC in any capacity. This earlier consent order found that, from at least November 2006 through at least November 2008, defendants solicited more than $11.9 million from approximately 411 customers for the purported purpose of trading forex. To carry out their scheme, defendants informed customers and prospective customers that, because of CRW’s purported success in trading forex, it would be able to and, in fact, purportedly did generate tremendous returns for customers, ranging between approximately five and eight percent a week (or an annual rate of return between 260 and 416 percent), according to the order. However, CRW never traded forex, and Ray White lost money in his limited forex trading, operated a Ponzi scheme, and misappropriated millions of dollars of customer funds, the order found. Another consent order, entered by the court on September 27, 2011, requires relief defendants Christopher White and Hurricane Motorsports to pay more than $380,000 in disgorgement and to give up their rights to funds and other assets (including certain real estate) held by the court-appointed receiver, Timothy A. Mack. In a related criminal matter, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas as part of President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, Ray White pleaded guilty to one count of commodities fraud and on May 24, 2011, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. The CFTC thanks the Fort Worth Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission for its assistance. “