CFTC Orders New York Trader Sidney Lebental to Pay $200,000 for Spoofing Treasury Futures

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued an order filing and settling charges against Sidney Lebental, a dual French and American citizen who resided in New York, for engaging in spoofing while trading Treasury futures contracts. According to the CFTC, the unlawful trading primarily involved the Ultra U.S. Treasury Bond futures contract on the Chicago Board of Trade. The regulator found that Lebental engaged in spoofing on approximately 50 occasions between January and September 2019. The order details that Lebental placed genuine orders for cash Treasuries—or, in some instances, for a Treasury futures contract—that he intended to execute on one side of the order book. At the same time, he entered spoof orders on the opposite side of the market in a correlated Treasury futures contract with the intention of canceling them prior to execution. Once the genuine orders were filled, Lebental canceled the spoof orders. Under the terms of the settlement, Lebental must pay a $200,000 civil monetary penalty and is prohibited from trading commodity interests for a period of one month. Furthermore, the order mandates that he cease and desist from violating the spoofing provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act.