Investment Training Material Marketer Ken Roberts Settles FTC Charges

Michael Covel (March 28, 2005)

Disclaimer: TurtleTrader has no connection, association or affiliation with Ken Roberts or The Ken Roberts Company.

Investment Training Material Marketer Ken Roberts Settles FTC Charges

For Release: March 24, 2003

An operator who used deceptive
claims to market commodities, stock, real estate and other
investment courses has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission
charges that his deceptive claims violated federal law. The
proposed settlement would bar the defendant from misrepresenting
the value of practice "paper trading" to purchasers of his
investment courses and require him to disclose, clearly and
conspicuously, the risks associated with investing.

The FTC charged Ken Roberts and
his three companies - The Ted Warren Corporation, The Ken
Roberts Institute, Inc., and the Ken Roberts Company - with
violating the FTC Act by using their Web sites to claim
deceptively that consumers who successfully "paper trade"- or
practice trade without actually investing - are more likely to
profit when they engage in actual trading. According to the FTC,
they also failed to disclose the risks associated with the
trading techniques recommended in their investment courses.

The proposed consent order
would prohibit the respondents from falsely claiming that
purchasers who successfully "paper trade" are likely to make
significant profits when they invest funds in the market. The
order also would require that the Web sites offering investment
courses contain disclosures outlining the inherent risks
associated with investments in volatile markets. The disclosures
include warnings that investing is risky; that paper trading
does not mean consumers will make money when they actually
invest; that investors can lose money; that with certain
investments, consumers can lose more money than they invest;
that many experts contend that most individual investors who
trade commodity futures or options lose money; and that past
results don't guarantee future success. The consent also
contains standard record keeping requirements to allow the
agency to monitor compliance with its order.

The FTC vote to accept the
proposed consent agreement was 5-0. An announcement regarding
the proposed consent agreement will be published in the Federal
Register shortly. It will be subject to public comment for 30
days, until April 23, after which the Commission will decide
whether to make it final. Comments should be addressed to the
FTC, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20580.

Copies of the
complaint and proposed consent agreement are available from the
FTC's Web site at http://www.ftc.gov
and also from the FTC's Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600
Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. The FTC works for
the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business
practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help
consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint, or to get
free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free,
1-877-FTC-HELP (1 877-382-4357), or use the complaint form at
http://www.ftc.gov. The FTC enters
Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related
complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database
available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies
in the U.S. and abroad.