Stroud faces commodities fraud charges
Published 7:37 am Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Troy native John David Stroud is facing another lawsuit in federal court, this time brought on by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
A complaint by the commission dated March 5 accused that Stroud fraudulently solicited and accepted at least $4,888,442 from at least 17 people and used the funds to trade commodity futures and off exchange foreign currency.
The complaint also said Stroud misrepresented to investors that he was a successful commodity futures trader. In reality, Stroud lost more than $1 million between August 2008 and April 2010 trading commodity futures and foreign exchange. He lost even more at other times, according to the complaint.
Stroud was also sued in federal court last week and is accused of defrauding investors out of more than $1.7 million in Alabama.
That lawsuit names Stroud, former Auburn abd now Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville and eight investment entities as defendants, claiming the two men “employed devices, schemes, and artifices to defraud” seven plaintiffs from Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee.
Stroud and Tuberville, who were described as co-founders and equal partners in TS Capital Management, didn’t file federal or state income tax returns in a timely fashion and weren’t registered to do business in Alabama, according to the suit.
The suit said that John and Priscilla Abrams of Wetumpka, invested more than $745,000 and that Baron and Melanie Lowe put more than $532,000 into the funds, including the college accounts of their two children worth some $61,000.
Debra Clark of Lake Village, Ark., ($284,345), Fredrick Williams ($120,005) and Kristy Williams ($18,921) of Auburn are the other defendants.
The lawsuit said Stroud and Tuberville misappropriated assets, and falsified client statements and fund performance reports as they “unjustly enriched themselves” at the expense of the investors.
A woman who answered the phone at Stroud’s home in Auburn said he wasn’t there and she didn’t know how he could be reached. Plaintiffs’ attorneys declined comment.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, said Tuberville told Baron Lowe and Glen Williams in late September that all of the investors’ funds would be returned to them, and that Stroud indicated that they’d get their money back before Oct. 7, 2011.
Most of them have requested return of their money in writing but haven’t been repaid, the suit said.
The suit contends that Stroud and Tuberville “intentionally or recklessly made untrue statements of material facts and omitted to state material facts … to induce plaintiffs to purchase interests in the hedge fund or funds operated and managed by defendants.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.