ATLANTA (AP) - A Georgia man has admitted to defrauding investors through a foreign currency trading scam, federal prosecutors said.
Kevin Perry of Cartersville appeared in federal court Thursday to enter a guilty plea, according to court records.
“This guilty plea will be little solace to the victims who lost their savings because of Perry’s personal greed,” said Chris Hacker, who heads the FBI’s Atlanta office.
Perry, 22, convinced his investors that his company, Lucrative Pips, was earning big profits in the foreign currency exchange market, U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak said in a news release. Investors sent him money after signing agreements that said their initial investments were secure from loss.
But the company wasn’t registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a commodity pool operator, prosecutors said.
The historical returns Perry touted to lure investors were also false, prosecutors said. He used investor money for his own profit or to pay off other investors.
Perry continued to make false pitches even after the commission filed a civil complaint against him, prosecutors said. That included falsely telling an undercover agent that an investment of $10,000 would return a profit of $19,000 to $25,000 a month.
“We encourage citizens to be cautious with investments, and to remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Pak said.
Perry is set to be sentenced June 4.
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