OSC v. Coinsquare Ltd. and others (exchange wash trading, 2020)

Settled

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In July 2020, the Ontario Securities Commission approved a settlement with Coinsquare Ltd. and executives Cole Diamond, Virgile Rostand and Felix Mazer over reporting wash trades that made up over 90 percent of Coinsquare's stated trading volume between 2018 and 2019, with administrative penalties of C$1.9 million.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

C$1.9m

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. This regulator states penalties in CAD. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The Ontario Securities Commission announced this matter on July 17, 2020 as release 2020-21. The respondents named are Coinsquare Ltd., Cole Diamond, Virgile Rostand and Felix Mazer (3 individuals, 1 entity).

The agreed facts say that from July 2018 to December 2019 Coinsquare inflated its reported volume with about 840,000 wash trades generated by an internal account through a "Market Volume Function", which accounted for over 90 percent of reported volume, and misled clients who asked about the unusual activity. Diamond directed it and Rostand built the algorithm; Mazer, the chief compliance officer, is named in connection with his compliance role.

This library tags the matter as exchange wash trading and wash trading, 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.

Diamond: a C$1,000,000 administrative penalty. Rostand: C$900,000. Mazer: a voluntary payment of C$50,000. Coinsquare paid C$200,000 in costs, and the individuals were barred from certain roles. The record shows the C$1.9 million in administrative penalties.

The respondents consented to the settlement, which was approved by the Capital Markets Tribunal.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques 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.

• Exchange wash trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Wash trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2020-07-16 Statement of Allegations
2. 2020-07-16 Settlement Agreement
3. 2020-07-17 Notice of Hearing
4. 2020-07-21 Other
5. 2020-07-21 Reasons and Decision

Primary documents

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

• Tribunal proceeding
• Statement of Allegations
• Settlement Agreement
• Notice of Hearing
• Other
• Reasons and Decision

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. 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.