BULLETIN: OLINT’S David A. Smith Pleads Guilty In $220 Million Ponzi Scheme; International Forex Caper Laundered $128 Million, Feds Say
David A. Smith. Source: Orange County Jail
BULLETIN: David A. Smith, who presided over a $220 million Forex fraud known as OLINT, has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Smith, 41, is a citizen of Jamaica. He “executed a Ponzi scheme to defraud over 6,000 investors located in the Middle District of Florida and elsewhere out of more than $220 million,” prosecutors said. “Smith led investors to believe that he was investing their money in foreign currency trading, earning 10 percent per month on average. In fact, he was not trading their funds.”
The case included a conspiracy with unnamed others to launder $128 million, prosecutors said.
“Considerable investigative support” was provided by the Financial Crimes Unit with the Royal Turks and Caicos Police Force, the Financial Services Commission in Jamaica, the Special Investigation and Prosecution Team in Turks and Caicos, and the governments of the United Kingdom, Turks and Caicos, and Jamaica, the FBI said today.
Lead agencies in the United States included U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the FBI and the IRS. Also assisting in the probe were the CFTC and the NFA.
Smith pleaded guilty to four counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and 18 counts of money laundering. He was the majority owner in a Lake Mary, Fla., firm known as I-Trade FX LLC, prosecutors said last year.
Now, if only Andy Bowdoin would plead GUILTY !!
Hey, ya never know. They just may come up with a plea-bargain arrangement if he spills his guts. The problem being is how credible anything he’d say would be!
[…] Smith, a Jamaican citizen who was brought to Florida last year to face the U.S. charges, first must serve a sentence of six and one-half years in the Turks and Caicos Islands. His time there will count toward his U.S. sentence, and U.S. federal prosecutors said he’d finish the balance of his U.S. term in the United States. […]