The Federal Court has ordered Mr Eustace Senese (Eustace Senese), his son Mr Cameron Senese (Cameron Senese) and associated company, Transcomm Global Pty Ltd (Transcomm) to pay penalties totalling $60,000 following findings of contempt of court on an application brought by ASIC. 

On 11 October 2018, the Court considered the penalties proposed in an agreed statement of facts between ASIC and the parties and ordered the following:

• Eustace Senese had admitted to 23 charges and was ordered to pay a penalty of $40,000 and to pay $17,500 towards ASIC’s costs;
• Cameron Senese had admitted to 455 charges and was ordered to pay two penalties of $5,000 each and to pay $10,000 towards ASIC’s costs and
• Transcomm had admitted to five charges and was ordered to pay a penalty of $10,000.

View the Federal Court judgment and orders here.

Background

On 26 July 2016, ASIC successfully applied for freezing orders against a number of defendants in the proceedings under sections 1323 and 1324 of the Corporations Act 2001 after identifying that Australian users of the Titantrade websites had deposited funds into an Australian bank account owned by Allianz Metro Pty Ltd (refer: 16-246MR ASIC warns investors about Titantrade.com).

On 1 May 2017, ASIC commenced the Federal Court contempt proceedings alleging breaches of various court orders in place that allowed the defendants to use some of the protected frozen funds for living and legal expenses during August 2016 and February 2017.

On 19 July 2018, the Court found that defendants Mr Eustace Senese, Mr Cameron Senese and Transcomm were guilty of contempt.  The judgment referred to the agreed statements of facts and agreed proposed orders between the parties, where Eustace admitted to 23 charges, Cameron to 455 charges, and Transcomm, five charges (refer: 18-215MR Allianz Metro contempt decision).

The trial relates to the operation of binary options websites www.titantrade and https://tradettn.com and the offering of binary trading services to Australian customers (refer: 17-391MR ASIC takes further action in Allianz Metro binary option trading investigation).

*Editor's note 1:

The matter now returns to Court on 29 April 2019 for a three day contested hearing.