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WHAT THE RECORD SHOWED

FXCM marketed its No Dealing Desk platform as free of conflicts of interest with its retail forex customers. The CFTC later found that, between September 2009 and at least 2014, the US broker concealed its relationship with its main market maker. That firm took positions opposite customers and paid FXCM approximately $77 million from 2010 to 2014.

WHAT HAPPENED

On 6 February 2017, the CFTC issued a settled order finding fraud and false statements to the NFA. It imposed a $7 million civil penalty jointly on Forex Capital Markets, LLC, its parent company and two founding partners. The US broker and those partners agreed to withdraw their CFTC registrations and never seek registration again. This case concerns the named US entity and the conduct covered by that order.

WHAT THE RECORD SHOWED

A real business with real students, a large following and a genuine product. It is exactly the profile that a regulation checkbox waves through, because there was no licence to check and nothing obviously fraudulent to point at. What there was, in volume, was earnings claims that could not be substantiated.

WHAT HAPPENED

The FTC sued in April 2022 over those claims. The order required a $3 million payment and barred the unsubstantiated earnings representations that had driven the marketing. In January 2023 the FTC paid out $2.9 million of it to 20,402 people.

WHAT THE RECORD SHOWED

The CFTC had listed it since June 2023 as a foreign entity soliciting US customers without being registered. That list is public, free and searchable in under a minute, and for the eight months that followed the firm kept selling challenges and kept turning up in recommendations. Nothing about the check was hard. It simply was not part of anyone's routine.

WHAT HAPPENED

In February 2024 MetaQuotes terminated its MetaTrader licence and every account froze overnight. Three months of restart attempts came to nothing, and in May 2024 the firm closed permanently citing insolvency, with unpaid trader balances reported at around $1.2 million across some 300 accounts.

WHAT THE RECORD SHOWED

ROFX.net marketed an automated forex robot as highly successful and promised to cover customers' losses. According to the CFTC's 2022 complaint, more than 1,100 customers opened accounts. Customers were asked to send their money to companies behind the service, trusting that the advertised robot would trade forex on their behalf.

WHAT HAPPENED

Court orders found that the robot-trading claims were false and at least $57.5 million was misappropriated between January 2018 and September 2021. Funds went to unrelated offshore entities and personal accounts. On 22 April 2024, a default judgment ordered nine defendants to pay over $56 million in restitution and a $169 million civil penalty, with permanent CFTC trading and registration bans. Orders against the remaining defendant completed the CFTC case in May 2024.