Las Vegas man settles federal futures case

Friday, Dec. 27, 2002 | 10:10 a.m.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a settlement Tuesday with a Las Vegas man it accused of violating the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act.

Stephen Cox, who advertised in trade magazines from January 2001 through August 2002 as a full-time commodity trader doing business as Natural Order Educators, agreed to pay civil penalties of $25,000 to settle the Commission's claims.

Cox was also suspended from trading for three months starting Dec. 24 and agreed not to misrepresent the risks associated with trading commodity futures. Cox settled the Commission's claims without admitting or denying the Commission's findings of fact or conclusions of law, the CFTC said. Cox could not be reached for comment.

Cox was accused of misleading customers by identifying specific trades in his advertisements as profitable and achieved using his so-called commodity futures trading method "the Natural Order," when, in fact, half of these listed trades were hypothetical.

Cox was accused of misrepresenting the risks inherent in trading commodity futures contracts by claiming that his trading method provided "uncanny accuracy" with "much less risk." But he allegedly failed to disclose he had suffered net trading losses during the first year of advertising the Natural Order trading method.