Ryan Masten of Earn2Trade has been charged with fraud. Trading
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Ryan Masten of Earn2Trade has been charged with fraud. The CFTC, or Commodities Futures Trading Commission has charged the owner of Earn2Trade, Ryan Masten with fraud. In the verified complaint, binary options filed in the Western District of Texas on September 2, is alleging that Masten was partnered with various Israeli citizens and orchestrated a global investment fraud of approximately $233 million dollars. The complaint alleges that the total damages for investors within the United States is approximately $165 million dollars.
How did the scam work? According to the CFTC, Ryan Masten was the lead developer for a binary options trading platform that was systematically “rigged” where investors were nearly guaranteed to lose their entire investments. In particular, binary options strategy the CFTC is alleging that investors essentially believed that they were trading in live, regulated exchanges, binary options strategy with actual counterparties to their trades. Except, there were no legitimate actual counterparties.
The actual counterparties to the trades were actually the owners of the trading platform, who intentionally rigged the game. The CFTC is alleging that the bid/ask spreads were illegally widened to the investors’ detriment, binary options that profitable trades (which would have cost the company money) were illegally deleted, and that investors were driven into guaranteed losing trades through an elaborate “auto-trading” scheme. According to the CFTC, Ryan Masten owned approximately 30% of the company, and he received $1,448,209 — at a minimum — in compensation.
The auto trader scheme. The “auto trading” scheme was elaborate, deceitful, and designed to inflict as much financial damage as possible upon its victims. As the CFTC complaint stated, “Since at least 2012, Ryan Masten, forex along with his wife, created a website titled: SignalPush.com. The purpose of SignalPush.com was to convince investors within the United States and elsewhere that they were receiving “top notch trading signals” from “vetted and experienced money managers or financial professionals.” The CFTC states that there were no “vetted and experienced money managers or financial professionals” involved in any of the “trading signals” offered by Ryan Masten through the SignalPush.com platform.
Instead, the trading signals were specifically devised to quickly and remorselessly churn the trading account with losing trades — thereby draining the account to zero. Once the account was drained to zero, a “boiler room” operation located in Tel Aviv, Israel would then begin calling and offering “free trades” and “sign up bonuses” to further lure yet more deposits. The boiler room is described as a sort of “financial slaughterhouse” where telephone sales people would ruthlessly press financially desperate consumers into “taking one more chance” at financial freedom.
The goal was to drain the credit card to zero available credit. The callousness was stunning. How the money was spent. As you can imagine, the money was wasted as fast as they allegedly stole it. Although there is a virtual cornucopia on how defendants wantonly wasted the money, it can best be depicted by the social media postings of Joshua Cartu — an alleged partner of Ryan Masten.
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