20% a week stolen identity Ponzi


Lucent Trader provides no credible company ownership or executive information on its website.

Supposedly, Lucent Trader is headed up by Chairman James Brent Craig;

James Brent Craig is Chairman and Executive Director of Lucent Trader, a Commodity analyst and forex trader with over 16 years experience in the Financial industry.

He has been trading since 2005 within which he developed a proven strategy and has been able to teach his strategy to other successful traders with consistent results.

James is a family man from Miami, Florida, USA, loves to travel and engage in meeting clients.

Not surprisingly, Craig doesn’t exist outside of Lucent Trader’s marketing. This makes him a prime Boris CEO candidate.

What I believe whoever is actually behind Lucent Trader has done, is misappropriated the identify of an actual James Brent Craig.

The actual Craig is based out of Florida and is registered with FINRA. Lucent Trade’s fictional Craig biography appears loosely based on the actual Craig’s FINRA record.

The man on Lucent Trader’s website appears to be of middle-eastern or Indian heritage. Public records confirm the actual James Brent Craig in Florida is “white, not Hispanic”.

Regardless of where he’s actually from, the man representing Craig on Lucent Trader’s website is clearly not “white, not Hispanic”.

This isn’t the first time scammers have misappropriated the identity of a FINRA registered broker.

Lucent Trader’s website domain (“lucentrader.com”), was first registered in March 2021. The private registration was last updated on March 14th, 2022.

Despite being around for just over a year at best, Lucent Trader falsely represents it was established in 2014.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Lucent Trader provides a corporate address in the UK on its website. For the purpose of MLM due-diligence, this is meaningless.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

Lucent Trader’s Products

Lucent Trader has no retailable products or services.

Affiliates are only able to market Lucent Trader affiliate membership itself.

Lucent Trader’s Compensation Plan

Lucent Trader affiliates invest funds on the promise of advertised returns:

  • Cradle Incorporation – invest $300 to $50,000,000 and receive 1% a day for 3 years
  • CBD – invest $5000 to $5,000,000 and receive 4.25% a week for 52 weeks
  • Cryptocurrency Mining – invest $5000 to $5,000,000 and receive 7% a week for 52 weeks
  • Forex Fund – invest $10,000 to $5,000,000 and receive 7.5% a week for 52 weeks
  • Cryptocurrency Trading – invest $20,000 to $20,000,000 and receive 8.75% a week for 52 weeks
  • Real Estate Program – invest $50,000 to $50,000,000 and receive 10% a week for 52 weeks
  • Oil and Gas Partnership – invest $50,000 to $50,000,000 and receive 20% a week for 52 weeks

Note there is some overlap in Lucent Trader’s provided investment plans.

Also note that Lucent Trader charges a 10% fee on all withdrawals.

Lucent Trader pays referral commissions via a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.

Lucent Trader caps payable unilevel team levels at ten.

Referral commissions are paid out as a percentage of funds across these ten levels as follows:

  • level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 10%
  • levels 2 to 10 – not disclosed

Joining Lucent Trader

Lucent Trader affiliate membership appears to be free.

Full participation in the attached income opportunity requires a minimum $300 investment.

Lucent Trader Conclusion

Lucent Trader represents it generates external revenue via a “proprietary trading strategy”.

No evidence of trading revenue being used to pay affiliate withdrawals is provided.

Furthermore, Lucent Trader’s business model fails the Ponzi logic test.

If the company already had a trading strategy generating 20% a week, they’d invest their own capital and soon retire among the richest on the planet.

They certainly don’t need your money. Nor would they be offering you access for free.

The reason Lucent Trader’s business model makes no sense is because, like its fictional Chairman, the trading strategy doesn’t exist.

The only verifiable source of revenue entering Lucent Trader is new investment volume.

Using new investment to pay affiliate withdrawal requests makes Lucent Trader a Ponzi scheme.

As with all MLM Ponzi schemes, once affiliate recruitment dries up so too will new investment.

This will starve Lucent Trader of ROI revenue, eventually prompting a collapse.

The math behind Ponzi schemes guarantees that when they collapse, the majority of participants lose money.