Release: 5024-04
For Release: December 2, 2004

FEDERAL COURT ORDERS NORTH CAROLINA RESIDENT JAMES DARREN MOORE AND HIS COMPANY TO PAY OVER
$1 MILLION IN RESTITUTION AND PENALTIES FOR DEFRAUDING CUSTOMERS IN A COMMODITY SCHEME

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced today that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina entered a permanent injunction order requiring repayment of customer funds and imposed civil penalties, among other sanctions, against James Darren Moore, a resident of Fairview, North Carolina, and JDM Investments (JDM), an Asheville, North Carolina company.

The court's order is the final judgment in the case filed by the CFTC on June 19, 2003 (see CFTC News Release 4810-03, July 3, 2003). The CFTC alleged that, from April 2001 to the present, the defendants solicited customers to participate in a commodity pool to trade foreign currency futures contracts. According to the complaint, defendants claimed to have accepted approximately $1.2 million from more than 50 customers, although, as the complaint further alleged, defendants only deposited approximately $634,000 of that amount in a trading account. Starting in October 2001 and continuing until December 2002, defendants sustained aggregate trading losses of almost $500,000, the complaint alleged, while hiding those losses from their customers by sending false account statements showing that the pool was trading profitably.

The complaint also alleged that defendants made payments to some customers that they falsely represented to be trading “profits.” As alleged, however, defendants disbursed the payments to certain customers in another effort to conceal from customers defendants’ substantial trading losses and further defendants’ fraud. According to the complaint, as a result of defendants’ repeated misrepresentations, existing customers invested additional funds and new customers were enticed to invest in the pool.

The court order, entered on November 16, 2004, requires Moore and JDM to repay defrauded customers $759,207, plus pre- and post-judgment interest, and civil monetary penalties of $267,093. The court order also enjoins Moore and JDM from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act as alleged in the complaint, and permanently prohibits them from seeking registration with the CFTC or acting in any capacity requiring CFTC registration.

The following CFTC Division of Enforcement staff members were responsible for this case: Elizabeth Padgett, Jan Folena, and Richard Glaser.

# # #

Media Contacts
Alan Sobba
(202) 418-5080
Dennis Holden
(202) 418-5088
Office of External Affairs

Staff Contact
Richard Glaser
Associate Director
CFTC Division of Enforcement
(202) 418-5358

Related Documents
Order