CFTC v. John D. Briner and MetroWest Law Corporation (matched orders, 2016)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

Report an error in this record (cftc-john-d-briner-matched-orders-2016) by email

In August 2016 the CFTC announced a default final judgment against John D. Briner, a disbarred Canadian lawyer, and his former firm MetroWest Law Corporation, imposing a $280,000 civil penalty and permanent bans. The order holds them strictly liable for a co-defendant's "money pass": 1,248 pre-arranged, non-competitive single stock futures trades on OneChicago that moved $390,000 out of MetroWest's account.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$280k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$280k

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 August 2, 2016 as release 7416-16. Judge Milton Shadur of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered an order of default final judgment against John D. Briner and MetroWest Law Corporation (1 individual, 1 entity), which ended the case. The complaint was filed on April 14, 2015.

The order finds that Briner gave Matthew Marcus the password and login for a trading account he had opened in MetroWest's name and authorised Marcus to trade it. Over seven trading days in January and February 2014 Marcus moved $390,000 from that account to one in the name of his company, Tech Power Inc., through 1,248 pre-arranged, non-competitive trades in single stock futures on OneChicago. The order holds MetroWest and Briner strictly liable as principals for their agent's trading violations, and Briner liable as a control person. The $280,000 penalty and the permanent registration, trading and solicitation bans apply to both defendants.

Earlier versions tagged this record as custodianship shell hijacking because the law firm was under the custodianship of the Law Society of British Columbia. No public-company shell was seized; the conduct is pre-arranged matched trading, so the tag is now matched orders. Marcus and Tech Power settled separately.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

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. 2016-08-02 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

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.