BULLETIN: Pedro de Sousa, Guillermo Rosario Arrested By FBI; CFTC Lays Out Yet-Another Florida Fraud Case

BULLETIN: Pedro de Sousa and Guillermo Rosario of FX Professional International Solutions Inc. (FXP) have been arrested by the FBI. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said the men operated a Forex fraud that issued false account statements, falsely claimed no losing months between 2005 and 2008 when they had lost money in 31 of 40 months reviewed by investigators and claimed winning months through FXP dating back to 2002 — even though the company did not exist prior to 2004.

“Rosario and de Sousa falsely represented to customers that since 2002 FXP had annual forex trading profits of 21 percent to 85 percent with no losing years,” the CFTC said.

“However, FXP did not exist prior to 2004,” the agency said.

Although de Sousa and Rosario sent customers false monthly account statements showing profits every month from 2005 through 2008, their forex trading “resulted in monthly losses in 31 of 40 months during this period,” the CFTC said.

Rosario also is known as Guillermo Rosario-Colon. He lives in Coral Gables, Fla. Meanwhile, de Sousa also is known as Pedroiz J. Sanz. He lives in Orlando, according to the CFTC.

Neither Rosario nor de Sousa was registered with the CFTC. Their company also was known as FX Professional Solutions LLC. Both entities were dissolved for failure to file an annual report, and FXP was never registered with the CFTC, the agency said.

“Rosario asserted to one of the [c]ustomers that he had devised a system of trading forex that he was confident would, at a minimum, consistently return 20% in annual profits,” CFTC charged.

“Beginning in May 2005 and continuing to February 2009, Defendants sent false monthly account statements to the Customers,” CFTC charged. “With very limited exceptions, these statements claimed profits of between 0.16% and 2.55% every month when, in fact, actual forex trading conducted by Defendants during this period (with or without the Customers’ funds) resulted in net monthly losses more than 75% of the time.”

When the scheme was collapsing last year and customers were asking questions and demanding their money back, FXP acknowledged losses to customers, according to the CFTC.

When a customer asked to see trading records, Rosario refused on the basis of “customer confidentiality,” the CFTC said.

De Sousa, meanwhile, told customers that the company started sending out bogus account statements because it feared that acknowledging losses would lead to redemption requests it could not fund, the CFTC said.

“In April 2009, one of the Customers asked de Sousa why FXP continued to send monthly statements indicating profitable trading during the latter half of 2008 if, in fact, FXP was losing money during this period,” CFTC said. “De Sousa replied that Rosario was afraid that if they told customers about the losses, customers would request to withdraw their money, and that Defendants would not have the funds to honor the withdrawal requests.

“For this reason, according to de Sousa, beginning in or about September 2008,
Defendants ‘started faking the statements’ that they sent to the Customers,” CFTC charged.

Investigators determined that the company had been “issuing false statements from as far back as 2005,” CFTC said.