(Globalintelhub.com 2/4/2018) — If you have traded FX in the past 10 years, you have probably lost and lost big.  Not because you are a bad investor or trader, but because most of the FX institutions have been run by ponzi scammers like Russ Wasendorf or Phillip Bennett.

The Fed has been quiet because their corporate owners and masters – the big banks – were making a killing from this state of existence.  The regulators either looked the other way (or are completely incompetent, but either way failed to stop it).

As we explain in our book Splitting Pennies – FX is the most important market in the world and the least understood.  Well here’s a big warning to you Crypto wanna be millionaires out there – in Crypto there is no relief.  If your funds are hacked, or the ICO you invest in is a ponzi fraud, there are only 2 hopes of getting your money back (as they say in FX) no hope and Bob Hope.

If you want to file a claim go to this website: http://www.fxantitrustsettlement.com

Here’s text from the class site and photos from the mail:

IF YOU ENTERED INTO AN FX INSTRUMENT OR FX EXCHANGE-TRADED INSTRUMENT BETWEEN JANUARY 1, 2003 AND DECEMBER 15, 2015, YOU MAY BE AFFECTED BY CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENTS.

PLEASE READ THIS WEBSITE CAREFULLY, AS THE PROPOSED SETTLEMENTS (REFERRED TO AS THE “SETTLEMENTS”) DESCRIBED MAY AFFECT YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS AND PROVIDE YOU POTENTIAL BENEFITS. THIS IS NOT INFORMATION OF A LAWSUIT AGAINST YOU.

Overview

Proposed settlements have been reached in the case captioned “In re Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation,” Case No. 13-cv-7789, which is a class action pending in the Southern District of New York.

The purpose of this website is to inform you of the pending proposed class action lawsuit (the “Action”) and of the settlements of the Action with the following “Settling Defendants”:

1. Bank of America Corporation, Bank of America, N.A., and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated (“Bank of America”);
2. The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd. (“BTMU”);
3. Barclays Bank PLC and Barclays Capital Inc. (“Barclays”);
4. BNP Paribas Group, BNP Paribas North America Inc., BNP Paribas Securities Corp., and BNP Prime Brokerage, Inc. (“BNP Paribas”);
5. Citigroup Inc., Citibank, N.A., Citicorp, and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. (“Citigroup”);
6. Deutsche Bank AG and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. (“Deutsche Bank”);
7. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. (“Goldman Sachs”);
8. HSBC Holdings PLC, HSBC Bank PLC, HSBC North America Holdings Inc., HSBC Bank USA, N.A., and HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. (“HSBC”);
9. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (“JPMorgan”);
10. Morgan Stanley, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, and Morgan Stanley & Co. International PLC (“Morgan Stanley”);
11. RBC Capital Markets LLC (“RBC”);
12. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC, and RBS Securities Inc. (“RBS”);
13. Societe Generale (“Soc Gen”);
14. Standard Chartered Bank (“Standard Chartered”); and
15. UBS AG, UBS Group AG, and UBS Securities LLC (“UBS”).

The Action alleges that the Settling Defendants and additional defendants, with whom no settlement has been reached, conspired to fix prices in the foreign exchange (“FX”) market in violation of Sections 1 and 3 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. §§1, 3. The Action also alleges that Defendants engaged in manipulation with respect to the FX market in violation of the Commodity Exchange Act, 7 U.S.C. §§1, et seq. Defendants deny that the allegations made against them in the lawsuit have merit.

The Court has preliminarily approved Settlements with the Settling Defendants. To resolve all Released Claims against all Released Parties, Settling Defendants have agreed to pay a total of $2,310,275,000.

In the Court’s Preliminary Approval Orders, the Court preliminarily approved two Settlement Classes.

First, the Direct Settlement Class is defined as:

All Persons who, between January 1, 2003 and December 15, 2015, entered into an FX Instrument directly with a Defendant, a direct or indirect parent, subsidiary, or division of a Defendant, a Released Party, or co-conspirator where such Persons were either domiciled in the United States or its territories or, if domiciled outside the United States or its territories, transacted FX Instruments in the United States or its territories.

Second, the Exchange-Only Settlement Class is defined as:

All Persons who, between January 1, 2003 and December 15, 2015, entered into FX Exchange-Traded Instruments where such Persons were either domiciled in the United States or its territories or, if domiciled outside the United States or its territories, entered into FX Exchange-Traded Instruments on a U.S. exchange.

If you are a member of one of the Settlement Classes and do not exclude yourself, you may be eligible to share in the Net Settlement Fund. The Court in charge of this case must decide whether to approve the Settlements. Payments will be made if the Court approves the Settlements and, if there are any appeals, after appeals are resolved.

Please see the Class Notice for additional detail. This website will be updated as additional information becomes available. Please check back periodically for important updates regarding the Settlements.

Yes that’s 2.3 Billion with a B.  One can only guess if this is the settlement what were the PROFITS the banks made during this time.  We know individual trades like the Burger King trade could have netted profits of $8 Million for the banks on a single transaction (of course the media reported discrepancy is ‘hundreds of thousands’) – we know that Citi makes something like $800 Million USD from FX per quarter but there’s no real breakdown of how much of that is deliverables, how much is derivatives, and how much is market manipulation.

How many class participants there are is not clear, nor is it clear if this is the ‘final settlement’ as state regulators such as NYDFS that fined Barclays 2.4 Billion but that’s really just chump change with an FX Chief dealer that summarized their policy with the classic: Barclays Employee: “if you aint cheating, you aint trying”.

This topic has been exhausted, let’s see how deep these investigations go.

For a detailed explanation of FX and how we ended up here, checkout Splitting Pennies, or checkout these books at Pleaseorderit.com