The top trader at an alleged fraudulent City of London foreign exchange firm didn’t even know how trading actually worked, prosecutors said at a London trial.
(Bloomberg) — The top trader at an alleged fraudulent City of London foreign exchange firm didn’t even know how trading actually worked, prosecutors said at a London trial.
Anthony Constantinou, who ran Capital World Markets Ltd. is accused of controlling the scam that swindled investors out of £50 million ($61.9 million), is on trial a London’s Southwark Crown Court accused of multiple counts of fraud. Lawyers allege that CWM lured investors in with promises of unbelievable returns to a Ponzi-style scheme. Constantinou denies all the charges.
Prosecutors told jurors this week that Constantinou made CWM look like a legitimate outfit with real traders when in fact there was no substantive trading happening. Constantinou’s head trader was a recent university graduate who did much of his trading on demo accounts rather that using real funds, with the remaining trades coming from Constantinou’s own money, prosecutors alleged.
“There was a complete lack of knowledge as to the requirements of retail FX trading,” David Durose, a prosecution lawyer said Thursday.
Stephen Monk, one of the victims of the fraud, said in court that he’d lost £60,000 ($74,205) in the ploy after being lured in at a trading seminar. In a tour of their luxury offices one CWM trader “presented as some sort of expert, some hot trader,” Monk said testifying.
Constantinou was a “domineering” personality and that despite the many employees and introducers who worked for him to find investors, there was no evidence that anyone else knew what was really happening, the prosecution said.
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