Florida man pleads guilty to $30M forex investment fraud scheme
09 June 2022, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rottweil: The lettering Forex and the currency pairs EURUSD, GBPUSD and USDJPY can be seen on a trading platform. Photo: Silas Stein/dpa (Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images)
A 49-year-old man from Orlando and a 44-year-old Massachusetts man pleaded guilty for executing a foreign exchange trading scheme to steal $30 million from their investor victims.
Michael Dion, of Orlando and Patrick Gallagher, of Massachusets, devised a scheme where they solicited people to invest in their foreign exchange company, Global Forex Management, by promising them large returns based on previous trading results that they had fabricated, court documents state.
The duo told their victims that their funds would be traded using an online trading platform provided by the duo's co-conspirators company that was in the Netherlands, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said.
Dion and Gallagher were working with their co-conspirators in the Netherlands to steal the investors money instead.
Both men executed their scheme by intentionally creating losing trades for the investors and stole nearly $30 million from their victims in 2012, the DOJ said.
After the two fabricated the trading losses, they routed the stolen money through shell companies they had set up all around the world.
Both men pleaded guilty on September 23 to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and each face a maximum penalty of five years in prison.