Trading Guru Busted By The CFTC

Listen and understand! That Trading Guru is out there. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop…ever…until your wallet is bled dry. – paraphrase of Kyle Reese to Sarah Connor in The Terminator

School of Trade (SoT) has been extensively reviewed by TradingSchools.org in November 2015 and the verdict was: 100% scam.

A few days ago, The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a civil anti-fraud enforcement action, charging SoT with fraudulently marketing commodity futures trading strategies and systems. You can read the press release here.

I’m writing about this case because I believe it is a good example of how scammers can operate and get away with murder for a long time. I strongly recommend you read both the review linked above and CFTC’s complaint. Here are the highlights:

The CFTC alleges that Defendants have: 1) portrayed Dufresne as a successful professional trader with years of experience and numerous awards and recognition when, in fact, Dufresne has little experience, has never been professionally recognized, and has never been a profitable trader;

2) touted the profitability of SoT’s strategies and systems and claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading profits earned every year, when, in fact, none of the Defendants’ accounts has ever been profitable;

3) promoted SoT’s “Live Trade Room” in which they purport to make profitable trades on live accounts in real time when, in fact, none of the trades called or profits claimed to have been made in the “Live Trade Room” as set forth in the Complaint can be found in any of Defendants’ accounts.

Defendants sold at least 877 memberships in SoT and took in more than $2.7 million during the period charged in the CFTC’s Complaint.

More than $2.7 million!! Let that sink in for a minute. And then consider the following: that’s only a small part of the damage these scumbags have inflicted on the people they conned. Many customers lost a lot more than the fees they paid to SoT by trying to replicate the fabricated trading success of JJ.

School of Trade is quite big on YouTube, which is a fertile ground for smooth-talking salesmen who grab your attention with successful ‘live trades’ and various other tricks.  Keep this article and the screenshot below in mind before wasting your time on YouTube trading gurus. To conclude:

• if your trading professional has countless YouTube videos purporting to show profitable trades, but no verified live track-record, stop following him. It takes less time to connect an account to a free verification service than to produce one of those videos.
• just because someone has had a website and been on YouTube for +5 years doesn’t make any of his tradings claims true.
• if it seems to good to be true, then it surely is.

Update: Here is the full, 39-page complaint by the CFTC. It has some real gems, such as the one below:

or the fact that Dufresne was incarcerated for 6 months in 2005 for attempted sale of narcotics, right during the time when he alleged to be a professional trader and hedge fund operator.