Judge Jonathan J.C. Grey of the Michigan Eastern District Court has stayed a lawsuit brought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against a former FBI agent.
The Judge granted a motion by the United States of America to intervene in the CFTC proceedings and to stay these proceedings pending the conclusion of a parallel criminal case in this district against the same defendant.
A federal grand jury has indicted Jeffrey A. Royer, 61, of Montrose, Colorado, for defrauding investors in a foreign currency trading scheme.
The indictment, which was unsealed in October 2024, charges Royer with one count of commodities fraud and one count of wire fraud.
According to the indictment and other court records, Royer was a Special Agent with the FBI from approximately 1996 to 2001. In 2005, Royer was convicted of federal securities fraud, among other charges, and was released from federal prison in 2012 after serving his sentence of imprisonment.
From early 2020 through June 2023, Royer executed an investment fraud scheme involving his personal Forex trading account. As part of the scheme, Royer fraudulently solicited and accepted over $1 million from various investors in the Eastern District of Michigan and elsewhere. He then misappropriated the money or lost it trading forex.
Royer did not disclose the misappropriation or the extent of his trading losses. Instead, Royer concealed the truth from investors, including by providing investors with false monthly account statements that showed investment gains rather than the trading losses that Royer actually incurred.
The defendant faces up to 25 in prison on the commodities fraud charge and up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud charge.
