Former Chicago Board Of Trade Member Sentenced In $2 Million Commodities Fraud Scheme

CHICAGO — A former floor trader and member of the Chicago Board of Trade was sentenced yesterday to five years in federal prison for engaging in noncompetitive trades that yielded in excess of $2 million profit to him and a deceased co-defendant, who was also a CBOT member and floor trader. The defendant, David G. Sklena, was found guilty last year of four counts of wire fraud, one count of commodities fraud and two counts of noncompetitive trading for scheming to deprive his co-defendant’s customers of the opportunity to make the trading profits themselves. He was convicted following a bench trial last October in U.S. District Court.

 Sklena, 51, of Skokie, was ordered to begin serving the 60-month sentence on Oct. 31, 2011, by U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, who also ordered him to pay $2,048,7871 in restitution to approximately 45 victim customers, including one fund that was a pool of commodity investors. The sentence was announced today by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to the evidence at trial, the noncompetitive trades occurred on April 2, 2004, in the CBOT’s Five-Year Treasury Note futures trading pit. Sklena and co-defendant Edward C. Sarvey were indicted in March 2009 on fraud charges and violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Sarvey, of Lemont, died in December 2009 while the case was pending.

 The trial evidence showed that Sarvey was a dual trader in that he executed customer orders and traded for his own account, while Sklena traded only for his own account in the Five-Year Treasury Note futures trading pit, where he had been a trader since 1992.