September 7, 2016

CFTC Charges Fan Wang with Making False Reports in Connection with Commodity Futures Transactions

Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a civil injunctive enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Fan Wang a.k.a. Alex Wang (Wang), a Chinese national who resides in Short Hills, New Jersey. The CFTC’s Complaint charges Wang with willfully making false reports in connection with certain commodity futures contracts he purchased for his employer’s proprietary trading account.

According to the Complaint, on November 16, 2011, Wang, at the time a clerk and assistant trader at a financial services firm that engages in proprietary trading of futures, options, and energy derivatives, knowingly made multiple manual false entries in that firm’s computerized trading records relating to his purchases of certain light sweet crude oil futures contracts for a firm proprietary trading account that same day. Wang allegedly knew at the time he made the manual entries in the firm’s computerized trading records that the entries were false. The Complaint also alleges that Wang knew at the time he made the false entries in the firm’s computerized trading records that making such false entries was illegal.

On July 24, 2014, in a court in the Southern District of New York, Wang pled guilty to one count of making a false report in connection with a commodities transaction in violation of Section 4b(a)(1)(B) of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), 7 U.S.C. § 6b(a)(1)(B) (2012), based on substantially the same facts as alleged in the CFTC’s civil Complaint. On November 19, 2014, Wang was sentenced to three months in prison and three years of supervised release, and he was further ordered to pay restitution to his former employer in the amount of $2.2 million.

In its continuing litigation against Wang, the CFTC seeks civil monetary penalties, restitution, permanent registration and trading bans, and a permanent injunction from future violations of the CEA, as charged.

CFTC Division of Enforcement staff members responsible for this action are Kassra Goudarzi, Jonah McCarthy, Peter Haas, and Paul Hayeck.

Media Contact
Dennis Holden
202-418-5088

Last Updated: September 7, 2016