Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures TradingCommission (CFTC) announced that it obtained a $240,000 civil monetarypenalty judgment and trading and registration bans against Boris Shuster,of Fort Dix, New Jersey, for operating an illegal foreign currency(forex) boiler room operation and violating the anti-fraud provisionsof the Commodity Exchange Act.

The order, entered by U.S. District Court Judge Leo I. Glasser inthe Eastern District of New York, grants the CFTC’s motion for summaryjudgment against Shuster. The order also notes that although Shuster’sviolations merit the award of significant restitution, the court is notordering additional restitution because Shuster is subject to a$310,000 criminal judgment restitution obligation entered in a parallelcriminal proceeding, U.S. v. Shuster, E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 04 Cr. 628.

The court’s order stems from a CFTC complaint filed in October 2003(see CFTC News Release, 4852-03, October 16, 2003), alleging thatShuster and others fraudulently solicited more than 300 customers totrade illegal off-exchange forex contracts. The court’s orderspecifically finds that, from at least December 2000 to at least July2001, Shuster used a sales force to make fraudulent and misleadingrepresentations regarding the profitability and safety of trading forexcontracts and the actual trading of customer funds. The order alsofinds that Shuster issued false account statements to customers, andthen told customers that catastrophic trading losses had wiped outtheir funds.