A federal jury in Illinois’ Northern District today convicted a former JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse trader of fraud in connection with a spoofing scheme in the gold and silver futures markets.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the hearing, Christopher Jordan, 51, of Mountainside, New Jersey, was an executive director and trader at JPMorgan’s precious metals desk in New York and at Credit Suisse’s precious metals desk in New York from 2006-2009 New York in 2010. Between 2008 and 2010, Jordan placed thousands of spoof orders, i.e. orders that he intended to cancel before execution, in order to push prices in a direction more favorable than orders he placed on the opposite side of the market wanted to execute. Jordan used this deceptive spoofing strategy while trading gold and silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX), a commodity exchange operated by CME Group. These misleading orders were designed to inject false and misleading information into the markets about the actual supply and demand for gold and silver futures contracts.
Jordan was convicted of wire fraud at a financial institution. He will be sentenced at a later date and faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine the sentence after considering US sentencing guidelines and other legal factors.
Four other former JPMorgan precious metals traders have previously been convicted in similar cases. In August 2022, Gregg Smith and Michael Nowak were convicted after a court hearing in Illinois’ Northern District of wire fraud at a financial institution, merchandise fraud, attempted price manipulation and spoofing. In October 2018, John Edmonds pleaded guilty in the District of Connecticut to one count of merchandise fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, merchandise fraud, price manipulation and spoofing. In August 2019, in the Eastern District of New York, Christian Trunz pled guilty to one charge of conspiracy to engage in spoofing and one charge of spoofing. Smith, Nowak, Edmonds and Trunz are awaiting sentencing.
In September 2020, JPMorgan admitted in connection with (1) illegal trading in the precious metals futures markets and (2) illegal trading in the US Treasury futures markets and the secondary (spot) market for the US committing wire fraud Treasury bills and bonds. JPMorgan entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement, under which it paid more than $920 million in criminal fines, criminal disgorgement and victim compensation, with parallel rulings from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission announced the same day .
This was announced by Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division.
The FBI New York Field Office was investigating the case.
Trial Attorneys Matthew Sullivan, Lucy Jennings and Christopher Fenton from the CID’s fraud division are prosecuting the case.
Anyone who believes they may be a victim in this case should visit the Fraud Section’s Victim Witness website at https://www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/case/jpmorgan-chase-co-deferred-prosecution -Visit Agreement for more information.
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