If anyone else has fallen victim to Jim Goldman they should contact jab21jab21, he has been leading the way with trying to work with a lawyer to get our money back. Also if anyone knows where he lives should contact the authorities and have this man arrested before he ruins others.
"Jim" posted jobs under alchemyhft@gmail.com in recent months but I'm sure he is on the move working on other scams under different names.
I spoke with Jim's Lawyer today and he claims that he's been looking for Jim as well because the check Jim gave him for his services did not clear either. He says Jim has not been answering his calls or emails and he will be sending emails to everyone denouncing any representation of Jim's firm. He can you scam your own lawyer!!!. By the way I think his real is "James Goldman". This guy belongs in jail...period.
Just wanted to add my name and experience. I traded for him for about a month(not a full month since he kept having issues keeping up with our increasing trading volume and had to shut down trading from time to time). He owes me about $700 in trading profits, plus my $100 deposit. I had always had my suspicions about him. As others have stated, he was always disorganized and unprofessional. He would say that he would call at x time, or email tomorrow and wouldn't, had different email addresses, I would have to keep repeating information that we had already gone over, etc. These were red flags that I noticed along the way, but just hoped I was being paranoid. In our most recent conversation, he suggested I open my own account and he would wire me the money for margin. This was just too suspicious, a common way to launder money, and that when I found this forum. Glad to see I wasn't the only one...hopefully we can get this guy.
To all of us who've been taken by Jim, file with your respective local magistrate - writing bad checks especially when it's over $1,000 or more becomes a serious crime. Second, file with the State Attorney General of your state and MO. Third file with the IC3 a division of the FBI. What he did is very wrong and eventually this will catch up with him. It's just too bad people like this more than likely will continue to get away with this stuff. Oh, by the way, you'll want to file with the CBOE and SEC to ensure that he doesn't do this again.
I am a victim as well. I answered a Craigslist ad back on 4/1/11 for an Entry Level / Derivatives Trader position. I was first contacted by Jim Goldman from an email address from Citadel Trading, citadeltrading14@gmail.com, to go through web-based training which I did. He had me set up a Mirus Futures demo account for NinjaTrader. I first traded for him on 4/27/11 and received an email the following day that trading volume had increased 10x since the beginning of the month and that they were taking the server down for maintenance. My second day of trading was on 5/2/11 followed by another email the following day saying they were taking the server down again and were in search of a third party platform. He said trading volume had gone up exponentially and that the server was not going to be able to efficiently handle the volume if the volume continued to grow. I knew it was too good to be true...no trading capital required from me whether for trading or a good faith security deposit for a 50/50 split of the profits. I was laid off in the beginning of February and have experience daytrading index options so this sounded like a great way to make money. I paid him $100 for training, platform usage and commissions which he later said would be credited back to me as commissions were going to also be split 50/50 under the new trading account he was setting up with CQG. He owes me just shy of $400 for two days of trading. He called me up a few weeks ago and told me his partner left leaving him in the red and he was trying to come up with the money to pay his traders. I got a bunch of emails from him saying he would call and/or email me to explain developments further. He would never call when he said he would, if at all. I last spoke with him on 5/29/11. I am afraid of a larger scam in the works as he now has my social security #, driver's license # and birth date. I know he does not owe me much, but, I have a one year old to feed! Phone #'s Jim used: (314) 683-3292 (800) 584-6650 (314) 403-2406 (314) 514-4107 Email addresses Jim used: Citadel Trading, citadeltrading14@gmail.com Prometheus HT, prometheushft@gmail.com Website: http://www.prometheushft.com
I filed a complaint with the SEC about this guy about 4 days after making this thread. He never got far with me because I asked a lot of specific questions and made him very nervous. I am a portfolio manager and run my own asset management firm, so it wasn't hard for me to figure out he was a scam. Also the LLC lookup turned up no firms named Prometheus HFT for his state. There was one under just Prometheus, but not HFT and it wasn't him as the owner. I'll be happy to file a written report of my account of the story with any of your attorneys or agencies involved. Sorry to whoever got scammed, feel free to PM me for my contact info.