U.S. derivatives regulators have brought charge in an allegedly fraudulent, global foreign exchange trading scheme that apparently reached into Canada among numerous other countries.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Wednesday filed a civil enforcement action charging an Australian, Senen Pousa, and an American, Joel Friant, and their Australian company, Investment Intelligence Corporation (IIC), with operating a fraudulent off-exchange foreign currency scheme. A U.S. district court judge has issued an emergency order freezing their assets and prohibiting the destruction of books and records.

And, the CFTC has also charged Michael Dillard and Elevation Group, Inc., both of Austin, Texas, with registration violations. None of the allegations have been proven.

The CFTC says that the scheme allegedly accepted at least US$53 million from at least 960 clients worldwide, including at least 697 clients in the U.S., along with clients in Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Singapore, among other countries.

Its complaint alleges that from at least January 1, 2012, the defendants used ‘wealth creation’ webcasts, webinars, podcasts, emails, and other online seminars via the Internet to solicit clients worldwide to open forex trading accounts at IIC. It claims that clients were promised a monthly return of 9%; that its managed forex trading would risk less than 3% of a client’s capital per transaction; that IIC was able to limit the risk inherent to forex trading by limiting its managed forex trading to between two and five trades per month; and, that IIC has six proprietary traders working 24 hours a day trading clients’ funds.

The CFTC complaint alleges that all of these representations to clients were false; and, it claims that on May 16-17, clients suffered a loss of over 60% of their investment, when IIC entered over 200 forex trades in each client’s account.

The complaint seeks restitution, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, trading and registration bans, and permanent injunctions, among other things.