The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) yesterday (Monday) barred eight Americans for two years for soliciting US retail traders on behalf of unregistered offshore brokers. Each settled without admitting the findings.
The orders move the case from the technology supplier to the people who sold its product. In June, Netrios LP Ltd. and Red Acre Ltd. agreed to pay $2.5 million for the white-label service behind those brokers.
The eight co-owned brokers built on that service. They owe $650,000 between them, all of it to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The CFTC imposed no penalty of its own. Its orders recognize the amount each respondent owes the SEC, require them to stop the conduct and bar them from registering with the agency, or working for any registrant, for two years.
London’s trading industry is coming home!
The registered route for the same trades is small. The six dealers registered to offer retail forex in the US held $470.0 million for their clients in August 2026, by FM Intelligence’s calculation from CFTC data.
That balance had fallen to $462.3 million in June, the lowest since at least 2023.
Four Brands Took In About $391 Million
The CFTC releases do not name the brokers. The SEC’s own orders against seven of the eight, dated September 30, do, and they put a deposit figure on each brand.
The biggest was KOT4X, incorporated in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and active from 2019 to 2025. Customers deposited about $296 million with it, according to the SEC.
Its co-owners, Quillan Black and Anthony Tyler Williams, owe $125,000 each. The SEC described Black as a social media influencer known online as “Cue Banks”, the kind of promotion that 17 regulators targeted in a joint week of action in April.
Prosperity LLC, run by Michael Talento, Jordan Taylor Morgan and Michael Levi Peters, took in about $35 million. Each of the three owes $65,000.
Envi LLC, owned by Tyler Evan MacKechnie, drew $34 million, with an $85,000 penalty. FxSway LLC, co-owned by Lewis Matthew Neal, drew $26 million, and Neal owes $60,000.
Across the four brands, deposits came to about $391 million by FinanceMagnates.com’s calculation, against $590,000 in penalties for their seven owners. The eighth, Christopher Williams of Dubai, owes $60,000.
How the Brokers Were Built
According to the SEC, the owners bought almost everything from white-label providers. That covered the website, the contracts for difference (CFDs), back-office systems, a sublicensed trading app, pricing, liquidity, custody and customer checks.
In MacKechnie’s case, the CFTC said Netrios also introduced him to other service providers needed to set up the firm. Customers funded accounts in bitcoin or other crypto assets held in a margin account by the providers.
The brands earned a share of commissions and swap fees. Most of the trading was in forex, the SEC said, alongside metals, crypto, stock indices and single stocks.
Two agencies split the case because of the products. Forex, metals and crypto trades fall under the CFTC. CFDs on single stocks count as security-based swaps, which brings in the SEC, and KOT4X offered them on 37 US and European shares.
Registration Cases Reach the Sales Side
US regulators have pursued individuals who handle orders before. On June 30, the National Futures Association fined Marex Spectron $350,000 for letting unregistered staff take US orders, its second such case in four years.
The CFTC also keeps a public warning list of foreign firms dealing with US clients without registration, which held nearly 300 entities by May 2025, while regulators’ fines elsewhere can be queried through FM Intelligence’s Ask FMIQ.
The CFTC is pursuing the offshore route while drafting a legal one for leveraged retail crypto trading, and it asked for public comment on that framework in October.
The SEC orders also bar the respondents from the securities industry, with a right to apply for reentry after two years. KOT4X is no longer in operation, the SEC said.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.RegulationRead More
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