A Roswell man operating under the pseudonym Quicksilver fraudulently solicited clients to open accounts and trade in foreign currency, netting him and his company at least $3 million, a federal agency alleges in a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. federal court in Atlanta.
David Wayne Mayer created the trading software system used by Silver Star FX and then used videos posted online, social media accounts, and in-person marketing events to find clients, according to the complaint by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
But the complaint alleges that the solicitations repeatedly misrepresented Mayer’s qualifications and trading experience, as well as the trading system’s performance history and expected profits.
Mayer told clients that he had worked for a Wall Street hedge fund and during his time there was in charge of trading for a pension fund worth hundreds of millions of dollars, tripling the account every month. Those representations were false, the commission said, as well as his claim that the foreign currency trades made by the system on average would result in a “win” 90 percent of the time.
About 10,000 clients purchased access to the system and paid monthly subscription fees, the commission says.
It asks the court to find Mayer in violation of federal laws and issue an injunction prohibiting such trades as well as any transactions involving commodity interests for his personal account. The commission also wants the court to order Mayer and the company to disgorge benefits from the scheme, including salaries, commissions, fees, revenues and trading profits and make full restitution to every customer.
Mayer, who the commission says lived in Florida at the time of the scheme, could not be reached for comment.
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