A Roswell man who went by the name “Quicksilver” as he enticed potential clients has been ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution and penalties after a federal judge found he and two related companies were liable for fraud and other violations.
David Wayne Mayer had lived in Boynton Beach, Fla. and usually used a pseudonym when he was pitching potential clients to open accounts for foreign currency trading, according to the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s case in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
The CFTC alleged that more than 9,000 clients purchased access to Mayer’s trading system through two affiliated companies, Silver Star Live Software LLC of Florida and Silver Star FX LLC, which was listed in New Mexico, and went by the name Silver Star Live.
Neither Mayer nor the companies filed an answer in court to the case, and Judge J.P. Boulee issued a default judgment in late July.
For restitution, he ordered Mayer and SSLS to pay about $3.7 million and SSL to pay nearly $200,000. The judge also set civil penalties of more than $1.3 million for Mayer, nearly $9.8 million for SSLS and about $600,000 for SSL.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution attempted to reach Mayer and the companies for comment Wednesday, but was unsuccessful.
In promotional videos and other solicitations, Mayer repeatedly misrepresented himself and the track record of an automated trading system he designed that was hawked from at least July of 2018 to March of 2019, the judge found.
Mayer claimed he had 20 years of trading experience and traded for a Wall Street hedge fund, including handling a large municipal employee pension fund that he helped make “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Those statements were false, Mayer testified in 2019 to the federal commission, according to the court file.
In fact, the government said he never traded a live account.
The government said the Silver Star companies had more than 9,000 customers at the time in question and that people were solicited to pay between $99 and $499 for access to the system, which was marketed under various names, including the Forex Trading System. There also were monthly subscription fees of $100 to $200. And clients were urged to recruit other customers to the trading system.
