A US federal court in Florida has ordered three individuals to pay more than $128 million in penalties for running a fraudulent commodity trading scheme through the platform EmpiresX. Brazilian nationals Emerson Pires and Flavio Goncalves, along with Florida resident Joshua Nicholas, were ordered to pay disgorgement and civil penalties for violating the Commodity Exchange Act. Pires and Goncalves must jointly pay $32 million in disgorgement and $96 million in civil penalties, while Nicholas faces separate penalties of $289,000 in disgorgement and $867,000 in civil monetary penalties. The scheme involved fraudulent solicitation of individuals to trade through EmpiresX, and the defendants collected at least $41.6 million from investors. The court order permanently bans all three individuals from trading in CFTC-regulated markets. Multiple regulatory bodies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, have also pursued cases against the individuals.



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