Former NYPD officer pleads guilty to wire fraud in $5M forex scam

November 22, 2024 Robert Abruzzese, Courthouse Editor

The U.S. Eastern District of New York’s Brooklyn courthouse. Brooklyn Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese

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A former NYPD officer admitted to running a $5 million forex scam, defrauding friends and investors with false promises about safe investments.

In a federal court in Brooklyn, Jason Rodriguez, a 38-year-old, former New York Police Department officer and operator of a forex investment fund, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Wednesday.

Rodriguez admitted to defrauding investors of nearly $5 million through his company, Technical Trading Team, LLC. The plea was entered before United States District Judge Ramon E. Reyes, Jr.

“With this guilty plea, the defendant has accepted responsibility for taking advantage of close friends and family members and defrauding them out of millions of dollars,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

According to court filings, Rodriguez founded Technical Trading Team in April 2020 and served as its Chief Operating Officer. He promoted the fund as a secure foreign exchange (forex) investment platform and made promises to investors, including to maintain a “loss reserve account,” to cover any trading losses, and never risk more than 1% of the fund’s assets on a single trade.

Rodriguez also assured investors that he would not hold positions overnight. However, he violated these promises and lost substantial amounts of money in the forex market, using funds from new investors to pay returns to earlier ones.

Between April 2020 and September 2022, Rodriguez raised approximately $4.8 million from investors. $3.5 million of that remains unpaid.

“The defendant deceived retail investors into investing with his company based on false promises that he would invest their money in accordance with clear guardrails and that he had left the NYPD because of his success as a trader,” Peace said. “In reality, there were no guardrails. He resigned from the NYPD in disgrace, and he lost most of the money, inflicting substantial harm on his victims.”

Court documents revealed that Rodriguez resigned from the NYPD after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor and facing multiple disciplinary infractions during his seven-year tenure with the department.