The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced on Thursday it has filed charges against Thomas Lanzana, Nikolay Masanko, and their companies Blackbox Pulse and White Cloud Mountain. According to the CFTC complaint, the two defendants convinced their clients to invest in off-exchange forex pools, while in fact they were running a Ponzi scheme, and defrauded at least 31 customers of approximately $700,000. Here is how, according to the CFTC complaint, the fraudulent scheme worked from February 2013 to February 2017.