Foreign Exchange Trader to Serve Eight Years in Federal Prison

Lyndon Lydell Parrilla, 32, of Los Angeles was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole, Jr. to 97 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release, following his guilty plea to seven counts of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering for his role in the operation of Green Tree Capital. Parrilla also was ordered to pay approximately $4.6 million to his victims.

According to the United States Attorney for Boston, Massachusetts Mr. Parrilla, through his company Green Tree, solicited more than $5 million from customers, purportedly for trading in the foreign currency exchange (FOREX) market. Mr. Parrilla traded only a small portion of the customer funds in FOREX and instead spent most of it on personal expenses for himself and his employees. The Government says that, to hide this fraud, Green Tree e-mailed account statements to customers, showing fabricated trading results. Many of the account statements falsely showed that customers were making money through successful FOREX trading. The allegation is that Mr. Parrilla defrauded the Green Tree customers out of almost all of the more than $5 million they entrusted to him. As part of this prosecution, the government has seized from Mr. Parrilla a Mercedes S63, which is subject to forfeiture.

Mr. Parrilla’s partner in Green Tree, Ryan Manzanilla has also pleaded guilty to wire fraud for his role in defrauding Green Tree customers. Mr. Manzanilla’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 14, 2013, before Judge O’Toole.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which conducted a parallel civil investigation, referred the case to the United States Attorney’s Office and provided critical cooperation to criminal authorities.