Roswell, Georgia resident David Wayne Mayer, along with his companies Silver Star FX, LLC d/b/a Silver Star Live (SSL) and Silver Star Live Software LLC (SSLS), have been slapped with a hefty default judgment by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced Wednesday.
Mayer, operating under the pseudonym “Quicksilver,” and his companies are found liable for solicitation fraud, Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) fraud, and multiple CFTC registration violations. The case, initially filed on June 11, 2020, alleges a scheme to defraud customers through forex trading.
Judge Robert P. Boulee determined that from at least July 2018 to March 2019, the defendants fraudulently solicited customers to open discretionary trading accounts. They offered to trade those accounts using a fully automated retail foreign currency (forex) trading software system created by Mayer. The solicitations, delivered through online videos, social media, and in-person events, contained material misrepresentations about Mayer’s qualifications, trading experience, and the performance of the trading system.
Specifically, the court found that the defendants misrepresented the system’s historical performance and potential profits, and failed to disclose that Mayer never actually used the system in a live trading account. Additionally, Mayer failed to register as an associated person of a CTA, and SSL and SSLS unlawfully allowed him to operate without proper registration.
The court ordered SSLS and Mayer to jointly pay $3,712,035.93 in restitution. SSL was ordered to pay an additional $198,143.03 in restitution. Civil monetary penalties were also levied: $9,798,107.79 against both SSLS and SSL, and $1,338,000 against Mayer. All defendants are permanently banned from engaging in activities that violate the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), registering with the CFTC, and trading on CFTC-regulated markets.
This judgment builds on a previous CFTC enforcement action involving SSL and SSLS, which found they were operating as unregistered CTAs and that two former officers were acting as unregistered associated persons.
The CFTC urges the public to verify a company’s registration status before investing and provides resources to report suspicious activity. The case was led by CFTC staff members James A. Garcia, Michael Loconte, Erica Bodin, Aimée Latimer-Zayets, and Rick Glaser.
Source: CFTC.gov
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