ESTE Trader

Thanks for reading today’s review of ESTE Trader

What is ESTE Trader? The ‘ESTE’ refers to Enlightened Super Trader Education.

What is ESTE Trader selling? The company is selling the following products and services that are specifically tailored to the Forex and commodities markets…

ESTE Self-Learning Program:

• $499 Beginner Level Education
• $799 Intermediate Education
• $999 Advanced Education
• $1999 Whole Package

ESTE Live Classes Program:

• $850 per month Beginner Level
• $1150 per month Intermediate Level
• $1450 per month Advanced Level

ESTE Private Mentoring Program

• $25,000 upfront fee

ESTE Private Mentoring Program

The highest priced educational product of the Enlightened Super Trader educational program is the private mentoring program which costs an upfront fee of $25,000 and requires an additional investment of $25,000 to $1,000,000 per person.

During the month of May 2018, TradingSchools.Org (using a pseudonym) reached out to ESTE and posed as a customer interested in their various investment products and services.

Through multiple emails and telephone conversations with a person named Reynaldo Soriano (more on him later) he represented that he was a highly successful “millionaire day trader” living in a $4 million dollar house in Cupertino, Ca., was a former Olympian, world-class fighting champion in Tae Kwon Do, and had multiple University degrees in Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science.

As you can imagine, TradingSchools.Org was extremely impressed with such a gilded resume. I informed Reynaldo that I was ready to start tomorrow. He then emailed the following education and investment contract:

Mentorship Proposal - Terry (1)

Reynaldo Soriano’s Millionnaire Money Club

This ‘crown jewel’ investment program of Reynaldo Soriano is referred to as the Millionaire Money Club.

What is the ESTE Millionaire Money Club? Investors are directed to open Forex trading accounts with various Forex trading companies. Once the account is established, the investor must then provide the internet login and password so that ESTE can begin trading on the customer behalf.

I don’t know about you. But I would be extremely cautious about giving my username and passwords to ANYONE so that they can have full access to my investment accounts. However, this is exactly what Reynaldo Soriano instructed.

In the course of my conversations with Reynaldo Soriano, I described myself as a person with little to no knowledge of the commodities or Forex markets. In fact, I told Reynaldo that I was completely unaware of how these markets operated or what a ‘Forex’ was.

I next explained to Reynaldo that I was a simple man. A man of exemplary Christian devotion that relied upon the word of God and blessings of angles to guide my investment decisions. We prayed on the phone together and he assured me that Jesus was providing many blessings and the protection of Angels.

I continued to explain to Reynaldo that I currently had about $600k in my Charles Schwab retirement account which represented the life savings of both my wife and myself. He recommended that I immediately sell all of my stocks and give him full authority over all of my investment decisions.

Next, I asked Reynaldo what I could expect as a return on my investment. He told me that he typically earns his money management clients 10 to 20% each and every month. That with my investment of $600k, I could easily retire on my new income of $60,000 to $120,000 each and every month.

He explained in an email, “Goodbye to failure and welcome to success,” that I could put my trust in him and that my financial dreams were about to come true.

Who would not be excited about such an exciting investment opportunity? He then sent me the investment contract for the Millionaire Money Club. Have a look below…

SERVICE AGREEMENT

As you can see, the more you invest, the lower the fees and higher expected returns on investment. I next explained to Reynaldo that with my newfound riches, this would allow me to become a true disciple of God and that these investment returns would we be spread throughout the earth in the name of Jesus, all the angels, and all the saints.

Reynaldo then gave another prayer and muttered: “praise Jesus.”

The investigation of Reynaldo Soriano

Reynaldo Soriano certainly makes wonderful claims about his investment successes. Of course, TradingSchools.Org has heard all of this sort of nonsense before. The first step in our investigation was to discover the electronic trail of Reynaldo Soriano. The first thing we found is that Reynaldo has been selling all manner of snake oil investment products since before he migrated to the United States.

The earliest known website can be found with a company named OnlineTradingCFD.com (2006) where a much younger Reynaldo is found hawking his amazing investment secrets of so-called super traders. Apparently, he had secretly uncovered the winning formula of Warren Buffet and George Soros and he would be willing to dispense of his snake oil for only a small fee. The OnlineTradingCFD.com website is no longer active, but you can witness his investment supremacy by clicking the following link.

In addition to OnlineTradingCFD, there are other various trading related websites that also proclaim amazing trading secrets, including Supatrader.com, Profitconsistently.com, and others. They all follow that same narrative, that Reynaldo has discovered some sort of investment secret and is now willing to share his secrets for a fee.

How does Reynaldo Soriano find his victims, oops I mean new clients? The primary method of advertising his money management services is through MeetUp.com. A website that allows persons to create local community groups with shared interests.

According to MeetUp.com, in the San Francisco and Bay Area alone, Reynaldo Soriano has accrued over 1200 members and conducted approximately 510 past MeetUps.

One does have to wonder how many of these persons have also been offered money management services by Reynaldo Soriano?

In addition to local advertising of his money management services, Reynaldo also partakes in the usual investment circus that TradingSchools.Org often writes about.

For instance, Reynaldo was recently touting in a live seminar at OnlineTraderCentral.Com that he regularly earns 13,000% returns every two months trading Forex commodities. The proof of these claims can be found here. 

Can anyone realistically earn 13,000% investment returns every two months as per this YouTube promotional video? Sure sounds like snake oil to me.

Reynaldo has made other wild claims of investment success in the past. Another video proclaimed massive “real profits of 30,000% each month.” But YouTube was not impressed.

In fact, they have since removed several of his promotional videos for violations of YouTube’s policy on spam, deceptive practices, and scams. This video was removed. Once again, I didn’t call Reynaldo a scam. But YouTube did.

Its pretty fucking hard to get a video yanked from YouTube. But that is exactly what happened to Reynaldo.

CFTC Registration Violations

I am not a lawyer. Nor would I ever want to be a lawyer. However, TradingSchools.Org has now exposed several of these so-called investment educators that resulted in severe fines, penalties, and criminal prosecution.

The number one violation that I see over, and over, and over again is the failure to register as a CTA or Commodity Trading Advisor. What people like Reynaldo (and many others) do not realize, or refuse to acknowledge is that if you have a website offering ‘magical’ commodities investment advice to more than 15 persons within a year, you need to be registered with the CFTC.

Of course, the CFTC doesn’t chase each and every violator. This would be akin to a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. However, the magical trigger is when you start offering “money management” type services. This nearly always triggers an investigation. Which usually ends up being a massive butthurt for the offending parties.

Is Reynaldo Soriano or ESTE Trader registered as a CTA? According to our exhaustive search using the CFTC’s Smart Check, he is not. Should he be? It certainly appears so!

The Takeaway

Poor Reynaldo, I strung him along for a few weeks. He was so hopeful that I was about to bank wire $25k at any moment. I kept stringing him along. Telling him that I couldn’t figure out how to initiate a bank wire. I found it too confusing. I didn’t know how to use a computer, noting that bank wires are not mentioned in the Bible, etc.

He would respond with highly detailed instructions and I would come up with a whole new set of ‘problems’ that had to be overcome before I sent the money. Like one time, he was expecting the $25k at any moment, but then I told him that the broker at Charles Schwab showed up at my door and was performing a ‘welfare check’ to make sure I wasn’t being swindled.

Reynaldo emailed me over and over again. Pathetically begging me to trust him and that Jesus had provided the proper blessing. That the broker just wanted my commissions and that he couldn’t deliver 10-20% monthly returns. It was hilarious, pathetic, and horrifying. All wrapped up in a fucked up financial burrito.

I then told poor Reynaldo that my wife wanted to see proof that he earned $1,000,000 last year. That Jesus had visited her dreams and gave her exact instructions. He parried that she had misinterpreted the meaning of Jesus instructions. You get the point.

The Strawman

Part of the fun in uncovering these sorts of shenanigans is lulling the investment guru into providing some sort of “proof” that they actually trade or invest successfully. In other words, where is your audited personal track record of successful investing? Nearly always, they attempt to obfuscate. Or quickly transform into a chef that specializes in pretzel logic.

I have seen all manner of chicanery. I have seen faked brokerage account statements, faked brokerage letters, fraudulently produced spreadsheets touting incredible investment successes, a phone call with a guy that said he owned NinjaTrader Brokerage, a woman who said she was from the United States Department of Economics (there isn’t any such department), etc.

The most common is the ‘Strawman’ argument. What is that? Essentially, the investment guru will produce account statements from a 3rd party or a related party that purports to ‘verify’ the so-called investment success of the guru. Essentially the guru is arguing that since the ‘strawman’ is successful, that through the shared affiliation…they are also successful. Guilt by association. Only in reverse!

Reynaldo was no different. He proferred the account statement of a person NOT named Reynaldo Soriano. The account statement showed profits in an unrelated market with only a paltry profit. He was hoping this would ‘get him over the hump’ with my pesky wife. It did not. In fact, in only hardened my position that Reynaldo is probably running an investment scam.

Will I be posting this so-called account statement? No. The person with the account probably has no idea that Reynaldo is using him as part of the strawman argument.

Wrapping things up

Thanks for reading. This review dragged on further than expected.

One thing I can say for sure…Reynaldo Soriano has absolutely no proof that he is even trading. Let alone earning $1,000,000 per year trading Forex commodities. He flat refused to provide any such proof whatsoever. Instead is relying upon his ‘strawman’ argument.

Reynaldo is NOT a registered CTA, as defined by the Commodities Exchange Act. Furthermore, it is likely that he is violating that following provisions of Commodities Exchange Act:

• 7 U.S.C. § 6o(l)
• 17 C.F. R. § 4.41(a)(l)-(2)
• 17 C.F.R. § 4.41(a)(3)(i)-(ii)
• 1 7 C.F .R. § 4.41 (b)

I am not giving legal advice, nor do I proclaim to be a lawyer or regulatory enforcement expert. But in the past several years of writing these reviews…I keep seeing the same rule violations appearing over, and over, and over again. They could possibly apply to ESTE and Reynaldo Soriano. I will let the smart people figure it out.

So Reynaldo, when you read this…I recommend that you take a closer look at these possible rule violations. Furthermore, your website contains absolutely no hypothetical performance disclosers (a clear rule violation) and as far offering ‘investment management services’…you should think long and hard whether you should be registered as a CTA. It’s no secret that the regulators read this blog.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave your comments below.