Crude Oil & Futures Trading | Trading Strategies & Guidance

In March 2015, 4D account holders have started to receive cheques from the recently agreed PFG FUTURES CUSTOMERS OF PROPOSED DISTRIBUTION.

This is great news for all claimants in the PFG fraud although we really hope another distribution is in the pipeline considering the assets and cash still held on behalf of the bulked PFG clients!

For claimants that have received all previous distributions, the incremental distribution is 11%. These cheques should bring your account up to 60% of the balance.

If you have not received a cheque in due course we recommend you contact The Trustee direct. Trustee

KWWL (http://www.kwwl.com) recently traveled to Cedar Rapids to interview Federal Prosecutor, Peter Deegan. In addition a trip to Chicago to check in with Ira Bodenstein, the PFG bankruptcy trustee, Michael Eidelman, the court-appoint receiver and Daniel Roth, President of the national Futures Association.

Watch the story on kwwl.com

http://www.kwwl.com/story/31294630/russ-wasendorf-and-his-imaginary-empire

NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF
IN RE PEREGRINE FINANCIAL
GROUP CUSTOMER LITIGATION

On October 13, 2015, United States District Court Judge Sara L. Ellis entered a series of Orders, which resolved the pending customer class action brought against U.S. Bank National Association (“U.S. Bank”) Civil Action No. 12-cv-5546.  The Orders which were entered are as follows:

i. Final Judgment and Order of Dismissal with Prejudice;

ii. Order Approving Plan of Allocation;

iii. Order Awarding Attorneys’ Fees and Expenses; and

iv. Order Awarding Service Awards.

As a result of the settlement, U.S. Bank will be making a payment of $44.5 million dollars to resolve all claims.  Of that amount, the court approved legal fees for the class lawyers in the amount of $13,795,000 and expenses of $437,440.  The court also approved services awards to the named plaintiffs in the class action totaling $45,000.

Under the Plan of Allocation:

• For “New Claimants” (Class members who do not have allowed claims in the bankruptcy action), each “shall receiver a share of the Net Settlement Fund that is determined by multiplying the amount of such New Claimant’s timely claim as approved in the Customer Class Action by a payment ratio computed as: the Net Settlement Fund divided by $215,000,000.00.”  The amount to be distributed to New Claimants is capped at 50% of the Net Settlement Fund.
• For Class members with allowed claims in the bankruptcy case: “After the determination of the aggregate amount to be disbursed to the New Claimants, the balance of the Net Settlement Fund shall be transferred to the Trustee for distribution to Settlement Class Members who hold Allowed Claims in the Bankruptcy Case.”

The Trustee estimates the balance of the “Net Settlement Fund” will be approximately $30,000,000.  Upon receipt of the balance of the “Net Settlement Fund” the Trustee will file a motion with the bankruptcy court to authorize a further distribution to 4d claimants with Allowed Claims.  The Trustee anticipates the distribution will be made in the first quarter of 2016.

An Iowa federal judge on Friday 19th Dec 2014 agreed to dismiss a suit brought by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission against U.S. Bank NA after the two parties agreed to settle claims that the bank aided bankrupt Peregrine Financial Group Inc.’s former CEO in misappropriating $215 million in customer funds.

Chief District Judge Linda R. Reade dismissed with prejudice the suit, which was set for trial on Jan. 5.

The terms of the settlement remain a secret, but the CFTC originally sought $36 million in recompense.

Will the PFG clients who lost money ever get to see any of this “settlement”? 

Conference Call.

The CCC (Commodity Customer Coalition – http://commoditycustomercoalition.org) has scheduled a conference call to discuss the PFG situation on Friday 12th December 2014, at 4pm CDT.

Further Distribution to PFG Customers.

The PFG Trustee entered a motion for another interim distribution to PFG customers, opposition is unlikely so clients of PFG should receive another distribution very soon, hopefully before the New Year.

FINALLY, 30.7 customers will have then received 100% of their money – Unfortunately, 3d customers will have received only a 44% recovery. The Trustee retains assets in excess of 50million which could be used for future distributions, but this amount is reserved “pending the outcomes of litigation” – WHY IS 50MILLION OF CLIENT MONEY RESERVED? CLIENTS OF PFG SHOULD HAVE RECEIVED EVERY CENT OF MONEY AVAILABLE – It is an absolute disgrace that so much money has been lost by clients who believed their funds were safe under Govt. & Futures Regulations.

CLIENTS OF PFG should PREFERENTIALLY get ALL THEIR MONY BACK before anyone else receives one cent from the estate of PFG – General Creditors, Professional Fees, fines, whatever – ALL at the end of the queue AFTER CLIENTS ARE MADE WHOLE.

The Govt. or at the very least the NFA/CFTC, should be footing the bills of the Trustee, and all other associated costs, it´s sickening that PFG clients are left in the cold when billions of dollars are spent frivolously – The PFG clients money is the clients money, simple fact. 

IRS Civil Penalty against PFG.

In addition the IRS have made an adjustment to PFG for tax years 2007 to 2011 “adding $97million to its adjusted gross income” and has levied a $16million civil penalty against PFG – How on earth does it make sense to increase a tax liability to a firm that has embezzled money from its client investors, and those clients are still scores of millions in the red? –  Will the PFG clients be  MADE WHOLE before the IRS get a look at receiving any penalty fees?

“Tax claims can take priority to general unsecured creditor claims, so the Trustee will have to reserve property until the dispute surrounding this penalty is resolved”.  Clients of PFG are not “unsecured creditors” – IT WAS THEIR MONEY – Tax claims can take priority above “general unsecured creditor claims” – SURE – But they do not take priority over CLIENT MONEY. It was clear long ago that there were not enough funds available in the PFG estate to pay back 100% of all client money, which should mean that NO-ONE else receives a dime – Plain and simple.

The Govt. and the NFA/CFTC once again shows it has little regard for the clients who lost a great deal of money in this Wasendorf/PFG scam, clients who were promised protection by the “Regulators” in “secured segregated accounts”, protection by the CFTC and NFA who were obliged to oversee and enforce the rules and regulations, yet even after multiple investigations into Wasendorf & PFG, both the CFTC and NFA failed to ever spot a problem that couldn’t be closed by Wasendorf himself simply sending a forged fax from photoshop  – Maybe the attached fax header said something along the lines of…..“Dear CFTC/NFA, the bank are incorrect, look here is the correct balance, of course we are doing everything correct, I wouldn’t lie, you can totally believe me”– That was enough for the authorities to simply close the case and look no further into it? Simply WOW –  It´s clear to anyone that all authorities in this from start to finish have neglectfully looked after the best interests of Futures customers, and in particular the bilked PFG customers.

Whilst 30.7 clients finally seem to get all their money back, 3d clients are still no where near even 50% of their funds back – Yet the CFTC and NFA reap the continual rewards and profits of “policing the industry”, even though they are proven to have neglectfully taken care of this. Who gets paid when they don’t do their job properly? I know I don’t! Yet the authorities continue and have no responsibility to their duty, it seems to be a case of “sorry guys, we did all we could, lets sue US Bank and see if we can blame them”.

Jurors will decide whether U.S. Bank mishandled customer funds, enabling the founder of a collapsed Iowa-based brokerage to embezzle $215 million, a judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Linda Reade’s ruling sets up a civil trial that will dive into U.S. Bank’s relationship with disgraced Peregrine Financial Group founder and CEO Russell Wasendorf, Sr. At issue is whether the bank will have to pay millions of dollars in restitution and penalties or will be vindicated of any wrongdoing related to Wasendorf’s fraud.

Wasendorf, once a prominent businessman in northeastern Iowa, is serving a 50-year prison term after he admitted in 2012 to embezzling $215.5 million from 13,000 customers over a 20-year period. He carried out the fraud by repeatedly falsifying U.S. Bank records to fool regulators into believing that Peregrine’s customer account had more money than it did.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued U.S. Bank last year, contending that it failed to follow rules requiring banks to segregate customer accounts. The commission contends that U.S. Bank improperly accepted customer funds as security on loans it made to Wasendorf and knowingly allowed him to transfer customer funds to pay other personal and business expenses.

U.S. Bank has said it wasn’t aware of the fraud, noting that Wasendorf owed it $6 million in a loan when his company went bankrupt.

“We did not know about the Peregrine Ponzi scheme and in fact we were a victim of the same scheme,” spokeswoman Teri Charest said. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

The lawsuit seeks restitution for $35.6 million in customer losses, which was the amount Wasendorf transferred out for other uses, and civil penalties.

Reade rejected both sides’ requests to rule in their favor before a scheduled January trial, saying there were key factual questions that jurors should decide. She said jurors should determine if U.S. Bank had actual knowledge that Wasendorf was “committing a breach of his obligation as fiduciary,” or whether the bank acted in bad faith by failing to investigate obvious indications of fraud.

While noting that U.S. Bank and Wasendorf claim the bank’s employees were unaware of his crimes, Reade ruled that reasonable jurors could find otherwise, given the facts of the case.

Wasendorf repeatedly told the bank that two specific employees should handle any questions about Peregrine’s balance and that all bank correspondence should be directed to him, not his subordinates. A year before his fraud was uncovered, the bank told a regulatory group, the National Futures Association, that Peregrine’s customer account had $7 million; Wasendorf had told the group it had $200 million. Wasendorf told the bank that a mistake was made and demanded a copy of the confirmation form, sending in a forged copy with the “corrected” balance.

Reade rejected U.S. Bank’s defense that the commission could not bring the lawsuit because it also failed to uncover Wasendorf’s fraud. She said that while the commission should have monitored Wasendorf closer after a critical 1999 audit, its failure to detect the scheme “should not prevent it from enforcing potential violations.

Judge Doyle is set to rule today on a settlement which was requested by an Illinois federal judge in respect to the trustee overseeing ill-fated   Peregrine Financial Group (PFG)’s bankruptcy, whereby the judge was asked to approve a $10 million settlement reached with the receiver recovering funds from a Ponzi scheme run by jailed Crown Forex SA principal Trevor Cook.

Chapter 7 trustee Ira Bodenstein asked Judge Carol A. Doyle to approve the settlement two weeks ago, which would release the Peregrine estate from all but one of attorney R.J. Zayed’s claims, including allegations that Peregrine managers ignored red flags as Mr. Cook and his cohorts sent them $48 million in illegal profits from his scheme.

The settlement addresses a set of consolidated claims alleging that Mr. Cook maintained accounts with Peregrine that were funded with money he stole in his Ponzi scheme, Mr. Bodenstein said.

“The parties have engaged in significant and substantive negotiations that culminated in the proposed settlement and stipulation,” the motion says.

“As a result of his examination of the claims and the complaint and the potential costs of litigating and liquidating them, the trustee has concluded in the exercise of his business judgment that the proposed settlement is in the interests of the estate.”

Trevor Cook was sentenced in August 2010 to 25 years in prison for bilking thousands of investors out of at least $190 million in his fraudulent FX scheme.

Zayed’s suit, filed in Minnesota federal court months before Peregrine entered bankruptcy, alleged that two Peregrine managers, Nolan Schiff and Ryan Peterson, ignored obvious signs that Mr. Cook’s funds were not segregated and therefore exposed to risk as Mr. Cook “scrambled to use funds from one account to cover a margin deficiency in another” over the course of their dealings.

Mr. Cook’s desperate emails sent to Peregrine as he tried to cover various margin calls “were objective evidence of fraud,” yet Peregrine “focused on one thing only: limiting its own financial exposure,” the complaint said.

Peregrine’s public woes began July 9, 2012, when the National Futures Association took action against the firm, and its CEO Russell Wasendorf Sr. was found unconscious in a car outside the firm’s offices in Cedar Falls, Iowa, in an apparent suicide attempt, prior to his sentencing to 50 years in jail.

PFG Clients UNBELIEVABLY still remain high and dry with only minimal repayments of account balances returned to most, despite the fact that the Trustee has tens of millions left and available in bank accounts to distribute – Hopefully this settlement of $10 million releases some of the capital that the Trustee has seen fit to hold back and ripped off PFG clients see more of their own money back very soon. NO-ONE should get any money until every single PFG Client has received all their money back, why are some “creditors” seen to be preferential over PFG Clients who had their funds stolen from them – PFG clients are not creditors, they are sadly victims of crime.

So the bankruptcy court  ruled in favor to agree the settlement arrangement we spoke off in March – No surprise there and good news that at the least she will not be keeping the 2.85million of client funds that were given to her as free money by Wasendorf.

“Under the arrangement, Connie Wasendorf agreed to pay $2.85 million, which includes turning over the frozen bank account. In exchange, she will be allowed claims of $701,799 for the severance agreement and metals account in bankruptcy court, records state. The claims will be distributed in accordance with bankruptcy law” In accordance with bankruptcy law? Let´s hope that the clients ALL get 100% of their funds back before anyone is permitted to have a penny under their “bankruptcy law”.

“As part of the divorce, Wasendorf also set up a severance package for ex-wife Connie Wasendorf, who NEVER worked for PFG full time. The package was set up to pay her $240,000 a year for 10 years and continue paying her insurance benefits, court records state.”  So now the Court are allowing her to claim severance against a job that she never even held – 700k worth of free money if she ever gets a payout. And no-one with-in the company thought it was strange at all that Connie Wasendorf was offered 2.4million over 10 years from a company she never even worked for, just because she was divorcing the CEO – Shouldn´t any payout have been coming from Wasendorfs private funds?

A Chicago bankruptcy judge accepted a deal Thursday between the ex-wife of imprisoned financier Russell Wasendorf and the trustee for his former futures brokerage.

Trustee Ira Bodenstein – wonder how much money he has earned from this overall?-, who is assigned the task of clawing back assets for the VICTIMS of Peregrine Financial Group, said a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge approved the settlement motion requiring Connie J. Wasendorf to return $2.85 million to them. Leaving her with how many millions left? Money which Connie J. Wasendorf got from where exactly? Some of her money surely came from her husband over the years of PFG, she should be left bankrupt, as many of the PFG VICTIMS have become. Whilst she may not have had any knowledge of what her husband was illegally doing for over 20 years, there´s almost no doubt that she has proceeds from the crime that should be totally returned to the VICTIMS.