A Northern Virginia man faces up to 25 years in prison related to a fraud scheme where he was paid by subscribers who were looking to get rich quick and “beat the stock market.”
Rick Tariq Rahim, 56, of Great Falls in Fairfax County, pled guilty Wednesday for his role in the conspiracy. Rahim also pled guilty to tax fraud on March 15. Rahim is scheduled to be sentenced for both the wire fraud scheme and his tax fraud on Dec. 20.
According to court documents, Rahim induced customers to subscribe to his products using social media tools including TikTok, YouTube and Discord. He posted false information to his websites and to his social media accounts promising extreme profit margins. He marketed his products under multiple websites including BotsforWealth, TradeAutomation, ProChartSignals, OptionCopier, CopyAndWin, SnipeAlgo and QQQtrade.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Rahim sought to induce customers by claiming he was extremely wealthy, boasting about trading millions of dollars and posting about his large home, pool, and luxury cars including a Lamborghini. Despite his claims, Rahim had more than $500,000 in losses from February 2021 through December 2022. He also did not invest millions in the market during this time period as he had claimed.
Rahim personally traded stocks for at least two individuals claiming that “we’ll hit home runs and make $500k+ per day very very often.” Instead, Rahim lost more than $300,000 of his clients’ funds in eight months.
He further defrauded customers looking to make investments by selling subscription access through a Discord channel offering access to his automated trading bots which could allegedly copy Rahim’s trading activity. Rahim earned at least $1,397,000 in subscription fees during the course of his scheme.
As part of his fraud scheme, Rahim also created at least 20 fake Discord user profiles to post emojis, likes and symbols showing agreement and excitement regarding his posts.
Senior U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton accepted the plea from Rahim Wednesday. After accepting the guilty plea, the court ordered that Rahim not give any financial investment advice to anyone for a fee.
In a separate case, Rahim also failed to pay the IRS taxes he withheld from his employee’s paychecks. He has not filed a personal income tax return since 2012 despite earning more than $34 million in gross income. The IRS loss is estimated at more than $1.8 million.
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Ian Taylor Higgins, 33, allegedly conspired with Rahim on one of his bot offerings, TradeAutomation, according to court documents.
Higgins owned and ran FXPrimary, an online trading platform that purportedly acted as a brokerage house and would manage investors’ cryptocurrency deposits. Higgins admitted that investors had little chance of making any profit. He also admitted that the investments were much higher risk than advertised by Rahim.
Higgins profited more than $4 million in the scheme and used the funds to purchase a Florida home for more than $2 million, two Teslas for $70,000, Rolex watches for $44,500 and other luxury goods.
Higgins was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Wednesday to three years in prison and will be ordered to pay restitution.
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Crystal Graham
