Faithfully, by 2:30 a.m. on Fridays, Frantz Victorin said he received at least a 5 percent return from EminiFX, an online investment platform that said people could get rich investing in cryptocurrency and the foreign exchange markets, also known as forex, the Washington Post reported. EminiFX chief executive Eddy Alexandre would explain that investors could withdraw their profits and use the money to pay their mortgage, car note or other bills. Or, they could reinvest the returns, Victorin said. “Everybody got paid,” Victorin said. “They got their profit in their e-wallet.” Alexandre, who is also the founder, president and sole owner of EminiFX, was charged in connection with running a Ponzi scheme, according to a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York. The profits people believe they were making were not real, the complaint said. But to this community, Alexandre was like a shepherd leading a flock to what they hoped would be life-changing fortunes. The weekly returns were so big and consistent, a minimum of 5 percent and sometimes almost 10 percent, that Victorin projected he would become a millionaire after a little less than a year. “EminiFX is your sure path to financial freedom,” the company website promised. It was an appealing pitch that brought in millions of dollars from thousands of investors. The FBI says the purported proprietary trading platform used by EminiFX was a fraud and that Alexandre was operating a cryptocurrency and foreign exchange Ponzi-like scheme that collected more than $59 million starting in September 2021 until he was taken into custody by the FBI in May. The Justice Department complaint alleges the platform only invested a relatively small percentage of investor funds and misdirected around $14.7 million to his personal bank account. A separate complaint by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleges that only about $9 million of the $59 million raised from investors appears to have been sent to a futures commission merchant for trading purposes. The complaint alleges that trading by Alexandre at an online brokerage racked up over $6 million in losses.
