UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

Commodity Futures Trading Commission, )

)

Plaintiff, )

)

V. ) Case No. 20-3758

)

Long Leaf Trading Group, Inc., ) Hon. Thomas A. Durkin

James A. Donelson, Timothy M. Evans, )

Jeremy S. Ruth, and Andrew D. Nelson, )

Defendants. )

Defendant Jeremy Ruth states the following additional facts:

1. Defendant became a Series 3 licensed broker on April 28, 2015.

2. Before working at Long Leaf, Defendant had never been employed in a position

soliciting customers in regulated finance.

3. Prior to working at Long Leaf, Defendant had worked in the restaurant and internet

marketing industries.

4. The Time Means Money structure was not a fund or a discretionary trading program.

TMM was a philosophy for how to structure trades and create a plan to enter the

commodities market.

5. TMM customers were provided with many risk disclosure statements. In the beginning of

every solicitation conversation, Defendant provided a verbal risk disclosure statement.

The Power Point presentation presented to customers includes multiple written risk

disclosure statements.

6. After the solicitation process, if a customer decided to open an account, they had to

submit an application. The application included multiple risk disclosure statements.

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7. The compliance department of Gain Capital made the decision whether to approve an

application. Customers in TMM were typically not novice investors.

8. All customers, including those that utilized the TMM philosophy in their trading certified

that they were utilizing genuine risk capital.

9. Once they opened and funded an account, customers had the choice to approve or reject

every trade recommended by Defendant and any other AP at Long Leaf. Since these were

self-directed accounts, Customers had the ability to trade any product offered by the FCM

Gain Capital Group, either by themselves or in a broker-assisted environment.

10. Long Leaf would make its recommendations to its customers and per their self-directed

account, the customers would give permission to execute the recommended trade on their

behalf.

11. At all times, customers whom chose to utilize the TMM philosophy, could decline to

make a recommended trade, exit a trade, enter a new trade, or could withdraw their

money from their account.

12. Customers received daily and monthly statements and a yearly 1099.

13. Long Leaf and Defendant did not make the exact same recommendations to every

customer. Long Leaf and Defendant would customize each recommendation according to

14. Long Leaf did not only recommend four-legged out of the money trades. Long Leaf and

Defendant recommended credit spreads, both two-legged, three-legged, and four-legged

and both in and out of the money. These included trades known as iron condors, iron

butterflies, put ratios, front spreads, credit spreads, and calendar swaps.

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15. In the event a Long Leaf trade recommendation had four legs to it, customers were given

a commission credit of $60/contract. Defendant Evans specifically implemented this

policy so the market regulators would not accuse Long Leaf of utilizing 4-legged option

spreads to drive up commission costs.

16. Defendant did not create or have input into any of the trade recommendations.

17. Evans and Leeney created and adjusted the trade recommendations according to changes

in the market using different sources of information. Their approaches were constantly

evolving.

18. Long Leaf made recommendations for trades on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the

New York Mercantile Exchange, International Commodities Exchange, Chicago Board

of Trade, and Commodity Exchange.

19. Steve Beranek is a licensed Registered Investment Advisor who mentioned to defendant

Ruth multiple times while going through the solication process as well as being a

customer that part of the reason he opened an account was to understand Long Leaf s

business model.

20. Rob Mixer continued to approve recommended trades, at his own will, in his account for

months after sending an email complaining about his account performance in August

2016.

21. The fact that a customer closes their account at a loss does not reflect whether their

account earned money at any point and does not reflect whether they won on their trades.

For example, a customer could have won on three small trades in a month but lost on one

big trade and thus would reflect a loss for that month.

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22. Defendant did not work at Long Leaf at any time during James Donaldson

with Long Leaf.

23. Defendant had a number of TMM customers who he did not solicit. These customers

were assigned to Defendant after the other AP s left Long Leaf, were already involved

with Long Leaf in a discretionary account and converted their account to self-directed

account, or sought out an account without solicitation by Defendant.

24. There are four steps to the solicitation process. In approximately mid-2016, Long Leaf

began having junior brokers perform the first two steps of the solicitation process and

having a senior broker such as Defendant perform the final two steps. For customers

solicited after this change, Defendant may not have made each of the statements

described by the CFTC.

s/Jeremy S. Ruth

Jeremy S. Ruth

Pro se

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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I, Jeremy S. Ruth, hereby certify that on March 4th, 2022, I provided service to the persons listed

below via email:

Defendants:

Andrew D. Nelson

Pro se

adnelson0503@gmail.com

James M. Falvey

Attorney for Defendant

James A. Donelson & Long Leaf Trading

jimfalvey@yahoo.com

:

Ashley J. Burden

Senior Trial Attorney

aburden@cftc.gov

Joseph C. Platt

Trial Attorney

jplatt@cftc.gov

Elizabeth M. Streit

Chief Trial Attorney

estreit@cftc.gov

Joseph J. Patrick

Investigator

jpatrick@cftc.gov

s/Jeremy S. Ruth

Jeremy S. Ruth

Pro se

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