The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced that a federal court entered a default judgment order requiring Willie L. Cloud, Jr. and his company, C & R Financial, Inc., both of Houston, Texas, to pay damages of $280,170.66 and a $5,070,000 million civil monetary penalty for operating an off-exchange foreign currency (forex) Ponzi scheme. The order stems from a CFTC complaint that charged the defendants with violating the anti-fraud provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act.

The order, entered on March 24, 2011, by Judge Gray H. Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, permanently bans the defendants from engaging in any commodity-related activity, including trading, and from registering or seeking exemption from registration with the CFTC. The order finds that Cloud and C & R Financial, Inc., from at least January 2008 to January 2010, solicited more than $585,000 from at least 37 members of the public to trade off-exchange forex contracts, luring them with false promises of enormous returns through defendants’ forex trading.

Read More: http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6012-11.html