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This reminds me of WorldCom. They had one bad quarter, but they thought they could make it up, and didn't want their stock to suffer, so they lied on their quarterly report thinking they could just make it up next quarter. The next quarter was even worse than the first, only now if they told the truth it would have been even worse; so they thought they could lie and make it all up the next quarter; you can see where this is going. The point is that it never serves your interests to lie because reality will catch up to you eventually. Maybe he had good intentions, and thought he could get away with it.
As far as paying it back. If he has the money, he should have to pay it back with what he has. But letting him go back to trading forex to pay it back, nooooo way. That is like if I stole from your house, intending to give it back, and as my punishment I will have to come over every weekend and cut your grass. That doesn't make sense. Laws are set up to punish criminals, not pay pack victims. If we started letting people who fraud serve their punishment by just paying back their victims, there would be no deterrent to fraud. Joel Nathan Ward committed fraud, and so must be punished as such. As for the investors who lost their money, that is part of the risk of investing.
Last edited by Jason XXX : 05-06-2008 at 06:37 AM.
I mean after all he was a trader and also served the forex Industry by other means like educating people, seminars and workshops, so we should have soft corner for him. Though, the court can not be wrong in its discretions and judgements.
Whatever way/method people do to obtain money illegally or in a fraud manner is SCAM. Enticing other people so that they invest their money to get more profit, but not paying their profit and not returning their principal is also SCAM. From prehistory era till the end of the world, the performances like above paragraph are SCAM.
Every SCAM is crime. And every crime should be in jail, at least the actor of
the crime will be isolated by society unless he/she repents and forswears and has to return the financial loss of other people. Don't do as they do.
Nothing new I am afraid , trouble is he got caught , there are hundreds of scammers out there . No help for the scammed I am afraid . Plenty of Scammers post false results and are not licensed/authorised to look after other peoples funds , but they do and until they are tracked down and prosecuted will carry on regardless . Greed has a lot to do with it , if you are not used to trading these sort of amounts your trading will suffer . It is important to remember that a traders results on a 5000 mini account will be vastly different from a 5000000 account , in the amateur Market as losses are bigger and can affect the psyche of an Amateur trader . It is not as simple as I made 1000 dollars on a mini account and my losses were 500 dollars , therefore I can just multiply everything and will show large profits . Before you give your funds to anyone , take a look at their supposed profits , find out the amount they are trading , make sure they are authorised by the local Financial Authority , check out the Office they claim to be in and check out their Trader/Traders . It is not enough for the Company to be Authorised all Traders need to have passed the Exams as well . Quite often a Company will show 3 years results or more when infact that was Demo Trading , or they are quoting those results on a mini account , maybe their office is a virtual office or the company is registered in a wifes name , or they have been trading 1 year and have borrowed someone elses account , maybe they are in somewhere like South America but give a U.S address , in which case they have probably run away from a Tax problem or whatever . Before you give them any funds , ask them to give you written permission to approach their Broker to find out how long they have been Trading Live Accounts andthe Amount they are Trading....You are NOT asking for their trades or amount of Clients , you are doing Due Diligence , thats all , if they wont give you this information or the name of their traders to check they are licensed it is an odds on bet they are liars and will scam you .
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pharaoh
Nine Year Sentence for Forex Fraud. Too harsh or not enough?
Joel Nathan Ward used to be a hotshot forex guru with millions of dollars of managed account money under his control. Now, he’s looking at 9 years of hard time in federal prison along with an order to repay $11 million to investors. Is he a sleazy scumbag who should be grateful for such a short sentence, or a good guy who is being denied a chance to make amends for one terrible mistake?
Before I get started, let me interject a personal story. I HATE scammers. The thought of some thief running off with another person’s money or possessions fills me with rage. This probably dates back to my house being robbed just before my 9th birthday. It was bad enough that they ransacked all of my parents’ stuff, but they dug through my closet and managed to find the box with my coin collection, tucked away in the same place as my Monopoly, Battleship, and chess sets. The thieves that robbed my house were pros and got away with their crimes. I decided it wouldn’t be so easy the next time. I guess that’s why I now have a safe that weighs over 900 pounds, a large dog, and an alarm system.
Normally, I would join the chorus calling for this guy to be hung from the battlements and left to rot, but then I dug a little deeper and the case became more interesting. I still think this guy was wrong, but think it’s worth exploring how and why he went from being a good buy to being a bad guy.
According to Joel, he learned to trade at a California school called Learn:Forex. He claims that his trading became consistently profitable, and he then opened the Joel Nathan Forex Fund. Not too long after, he purchased Learn:Forex. He was well respected in the world forex community and both write his own articles and he was frequently cited by others as a source of good information on forex trading.
According to Joel, the school was losing money when he bought it, and since he’d successfully “borrowed” money from his own fund before and managed to pay it back out of profits, it didn’t seem to be too big of a thing for him to “borrow” more to keep the school afloat while trying to make it more profitable. He supposedly was about to do an IPO on the school and launch a new, larger fund that would have let him easily repay the missing 10+ million dollars when the whole scheme fell apart. He claims all the money was lost and that he only lived in a modest home so hadn’t spent it on a lavish lifestyle. At one point, while overcome with guilt, he described himself as a “financial serial killer”, and expressed deep regrets that he’d become a scammer, but even now remains determined to find a way to repay the lost money.
The Federal prosecutors tell a different story. They say his fund was a Ponzi scheme. The prosecutors say that the missing millions went to pay for Joel’s salary, travel, extensive marketing, as well as other expenses. One of the prosecution’s expert witnesses was a finance professor employed by the CFTC. That witness audited the books and says that Joel was only using $2 million of the $15 million in his fund for trading, and that his trading profits from trading that $2 million came to $1000. (Personal note – Wow, and I though I had a bad time trading!). Joel’s response to this is to say that the professor lacked experience with forex to be able to interpret the account statements. I find this a little hard to believe – I’m not a professor of finance (I don’t even do a very good job balancing my checkbook), but when I first began demo trading forex, it was quite easy to see what my total profits and losses came to. I also had no trouble interpreting any of the Daily Confirmation Statements sent to me by my broker once I went live.
According to the prosecution, “As a trader, he was a failure. The only success Ward had was in convincing others that he was successful.” and “Joel Nathan Ward earned every minute of the nine-year sentence the court imposed.”
Joel did plead guilty to five counts of wire fraud, two counts of mail fraud and two counts of money laundering last year and asked the court to sentence him to house arrest so that he could keep trading to repay the money that his investors lost. The court instead imposed a 9 year stretch in Club Fed along with a requirement to repay $11 million stolen from investors. Joel went so far as to say “I will keep trading. The court can't stop me from trading.” I’m not a legal expert, but I think it would be well within the power of a Federal judge to impose an injunction against Joel to keep him from trading even after he completes his time in the federal lockup. Prosecutors say that he is very unlikely to ever be able to pay off the debt, especially through trading.
This is where I am torn. Part of me says that he got off way too light and should be forced to sell his internal organs on eBay to help repay the money he stole. Another part of me wonders if he really did just make a terribly foolish mistake and should be allowed to trade (under strict supervision) so that his skills might be used to help recover the money that has been taken. Punishment is important, but should punishment be so harsh that it reduces the chances of repayment? Or, will he just find a way to go around any restrictions and scam again?
The prosecutors say his whole company was a scam from day 1. He says it only went wrong when he had to borrow money to keep his other company afloat? Assuming he was a legitimate trader at one time, should this be taken into account when considering a sentence? Does it really matter if he scammed from the beginning as opposed to making a mistake and falling off the straight and narrow?
If you want to read more about Joel and his problems, here are some good articles I found online:
HURRAY......................LET US CELEBRATE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Be to God for revealing the bad egg among the good ones.I HATE SCAMMERS either by direct or indirect,fraud is fraud.
As for him,that is not harsh enough.Well as per house arrest in order trade with ''strict supervision'' so as to raise money to settle for the debt.My own contribution is if investigations reveal that there is no other means by which debt can be settled,he can be granted just that opportunity to trade pending the period he's going to repay and as soon as he is through with that,he should be sanctioned never to trade for the rest of life.MORE SCAMMERS ARE STILL TO BE CAUGHT IN THE NAME OF JESUS.
HURRAY......................LET US CELEBRATE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Be to God for revealing the bad egg among the good ones.I HATE SCAMMERS either by direct or indirect exercise,fraud is fraud.
As for him,that is not harsh enough.Well as per house arrest in order trade with ''strict supervision'' so as to raise money to settle for the debt.My own contribution is if investigations reveal that there is no other means by which debt can be settled,he can be granted just that opportunity to trade pending the period he's going to repay and as soon as he is through with that,he should be sanctioned never to trade for the rest of life.MORE SCAMMERS ARE STILL TO BE CAUGHT IN THE NAME OF JESUS.
05-06-2008, 03:40 AM
the message is simple -
05-06-2008, 01:58 PM
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