The United States has applied to seize US$1.03 million that was held in an account at Forex Capital Markets LLC in the name of Cayman company Maydaisy Corporation, which was allegedly involved in money laundering.
News service Offshore Alert identified Ingrid Loiten, a Jamaican national, as the only director of the company, based on a search of the records of the Cayman Islands Companies Registry.
In 2008, the Maydaisy account attracted the suspicion of a US regulator which alerted the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Financial Investigation Team, the forfeiture complaint filed by the attorney general for the Southern District of New York said.
In a June 2008 complaint against I-Trade FX LLC, the National Futures Association said an account in the name of Maydaisy was suspicious because during the account-opening process in August 2006, Loiten had stated her annual income was between $25,000 and $50,000 but she made deposits totalling $1.7 million alone between December 2006 and March 2007.
Changes to her wire activity were also unexplained and unusual, the NFA said, as they ranged from initially $500 to $100,000, several times a month.
Other suspicious accounts at I-Trade FX named in the complaint belonged to Jamaican David Smith and his companies Olint Corporation and TCI FX Traders.
In 2009, I-Trade FX was fined $250,000 for money-laundering failings before it was wound up.
According to the forfeiture complaint, DEA investigators learned that in March 2008 the owner of the account, described as CC-1 in the court document but identified as Loiten by media reports, had been arrested by the Zambia Drug Enforcement Commission involving the potential money laundering of $7 million in a Zambian account.
The investigation into the source of the funds uncovered that the $1,032,181.98 million in the Maydaisy account was transferred from a foreign exchange dealer, which the court filing identified only as Company-1, after that company terminated its relationship with Loiten in response to her arrest. Another $1.8 million was transferred to a bank in Zambia.
According to the complaint, the DEA further learned in May 2008 of a Turks and Caicos police investigation into an illegal investment scheme that allegedly involved Maydaisy, Loiten, a co-conspirator 2 (CC-2) and another company, described as Company-2. The Turks and Caicos police determined that since 2006, $100 million had been transferred by Company-2 and Maydaisy to the foreign exchange dealer, Company-1.
According to the police in TCI, the court filing said, the alleged Ponzi scheme co-mingled illegal drug proceeds with private investor money. “The money was layered and integrated through a series of banks and foreign exchange houses located in the Turks and Caicos and the United States,” the court application said.
In 2009, the Supreme Court of Jamaica granted a freezing order for $8.15 million, noting that the funds of another collapsed investment scheme had been “transferred to Olint Corporation Limited as well as to one Ingrid Loiten who operated [Maydaisy] Corporation”.
In 2011, Smith, the operator of Olint Corp, was sentenced to 30 years in prison by an Orlando, Florida, federal court on charges that 6,000 people, predominantly from Jamaica, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the US, lost more than $220 million in his investment scheme.
He pleaded guilty to 18 counts of money laundering, four counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and served 10 years in a Turks and Caicos prison.
The forfeiture complaint does not name Smith. Instead, it states that for nine months in 2007, CC-2 was listed as principal of Company-1.
The NFA complaint against I-Trade FX, however, identifies both CC-2 and Company-1 stating, “For approximately nine months in 2007, l-Trade listed David Smith as a principal since he contributed almost 100% of the firm’s capital.”
Because of concerns about Smith’s background and the source of funds he used to capitalise l-Trade FX, the NFA asked the firm to provide Smith’s personal bank records.
But l-Trade FX withdrew Smith as a principal on 31 Dec. 2007, and repaid his membership interest in the firm when it was unable to obtain his bank records, the NFA complaint said.
The forfeiture complaint claims that CC-2 operated an illegal investment scheme in Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and created Maydaisy Corporation, with CC-1 (Loiten) working for him.
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