Boca Forex firm fined

Published December 27th, 2007

By John Johnston
Managing Editor

Boca Raton based Royal Forex Trading LLC, formerly known as Freedom FX LLC, and its chief executive officer, Justin J. Marsch, have been ordered by the National Futures Association (NFA) to pay a fine of $75,000. The ruling issued by NFA's Business Conduct Committee, is based on a complaint filed in September 2007 and a settlement offer submitted by Royal and Marsch.

NSA said that Royal and its unregistered solicitors used misleading promotional material and that Royal “failed to collect and maintain required security deposits from its forex (foreign currency futures) customers.” Additionally, NSA found that both Royal and Marsch failed to adequately supervise the firm's forex operations.

According to the decision, “Royal and Marsch submitted an offer of settlement in which, without admitting or denying the allegations in the present case, they proposed to settle this case by consenting to findings that they committed the violations alleged in the
complaint, and also by agreeing to pay a fine of $75,000.”

NFA an independent provider of regulatory programs that safeguard the integrity of the derivatives markets. Derivatives are financial instruments whose value is derived from the value of something else.

Derivatives usually are contracts under which the parties agree to payments between them based upon the value of an underlying asset or other data at a particular point in time. Futures, forwards, options, and swaps are the names of the primary derivatives in today’s financial markets.