Regulators sued a former professor and business partner over claims that they had used forged bank records to make it appear they received more than 20 percent in foreign-exchange trading, reports The New York Times.
Robert Watson, who taught at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School until last month, and a lawyer in Houston, Daniel Petroski, have raised more than $19 million from investors since 2006 by promoting their ability to earn profits by using foreign-currency trading software they call Alpha One.
The men produced records showing that an account at Deutsche Bank earned more than $2 million for their firm, Private FX Global One.
“These defendants used modern technology to create professional-looking, bogus documents that supported their extraordinary claims,” Rose Romero, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth office, said in the statement.
Watson was briefly employed for four months as an executive professor at Texas A&M before resigning on April 30. Pam Wiley, a spokesperson for the school, wrote to NYT: “He was an industry executive who taught one class” and not a professor on a track for tenure.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed suit against Watson and Petroski in Texas saying they had claimed quarterly returns of six percent to 10 percent. The suit said approximately 60 investors had bought $19.5 million of Global One shares.