The Worst Financial Scandals of the Last 20 Years, Including Bernie Madoff in 2008 to the Coverup of the OptionSellers/INT FCStone Scandal of November 2018 by Mike McLeod
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In this book Mike McLeod, who is America's most experienced lawyer in Agriculture and Derivatives Law, takes us through the numerous financial scandals that have happened since the attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001.
As referenced in his website www.mcleodaglaw.com, this latest scandal was especially grievous to McLeod for two reasons. First, as a young General Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Agriculture Committee, he drafted the law that created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 1974. Second, he lost a large amount of his life savings when OptionSellers went down in the second week of November 2018.
If this matter had been under the jurisdiction of the SEC, someone would already be in jail. OptionSellers had exploited a loophole that made them subject to CFTC jurisdiction by only selling naked options of physical commodities, and not on stocks.
As for INT FCStone, the publically traded company that cleared all of these trades, it is even worse. In 2013 the CFTC ordered this company to pay a fine of $1.5 million and absorb $127 million in losses. Currently, this company has a market capitalization of more that $700 million.
After the OptionSellers meltdown of November 2018, there was no fine, and INT FCstone was allowed to go after innocent investors for its losses. Amazingly there is no indication that the CFTC has even made an effort to quantity the losses of innocent investors. The only thing we have seen is a effort to cover it up.
McLeod's forthcoming book covers these issues in more detail.
SOURCE Michael R. McLeod
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