CFTC v. Mark Miller and Foremost Trading LLC (matched orders, 2020)

Judgment entered

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In July 2020, the CFTC settled charges against Illinois broker Mark Miller and his firm Foremost Trading LLC for fraud, unauthorized prearranged trades with a customer's accounts, and supervision failures, ordering penalties of US$450,000 and US$723,013 in restitution.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$450k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$450k

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced this matter on July 6, 2020 as release 8194-20. The respondents named are Mark Miller and Foremost Trading LLC (1 individual, 1 entity).

The orders find that between 2014 and 2016 Miller placed at least 45 round-turn trades, without authority, pairing a customer's accounts against proprietary accounts he held with relatives, which drained money from the customer. They also find nearly 500 further unauthorised trades that built positions in his own accounts without competitive execution, and that he took customer money by reporting invented errors to the clearing firm. The accounts had different owners, so we classify this as matched orders, not wash trading.

This library tags the matter as matched orders, based on the conduct the regulator describes. Each tag links to a page explaining how that technique works, what statute it engages, and what penalties comparable actions have attracted. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Miller: a $250,000 penalty and a two-year trading suspension with a permanent registration bar. Foremost: a $200,000 penalty. Both jointly owe $723,013 in restitution.

Miller and Foremost consented to the orders.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2020-07-06 CFTC release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• CFTC release
• CFTC order or complaint
• CFTC order or complaint

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.