TheCommodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has penalized two offshoretechnology firms for building and running the plumbing behind unregisteredplatforms that took on American retail traders. Netrios LPLtd. and Red Acre Ltd. agreed to pay a combined $2.5 million to settle thecharges, under an order the agency entered on June 26.Netrioswill pay $1.75 million and Red Acre $750,000, and both must stop the conduct,the CFTC said. Neitherfirm admitted or denied the findings. Netrios has long been pitched as a "broker as a service" provider, while Red Acre runsback-office, compliance, and payments services.Netrios isincorporated in Saint Lucia and Red Acre in Malta, and neither has everregistered with the CFTC, according to the order.How the White-LabelOperation WorkedTheregulator said Netrios sold a packaged service that gave offshore, brandedplatforms everything they needed to offer leveraged trading. Thatincluded ready-made websites, sublicensed third-party trading software, marginaccounts that held customer money, trade execution and liquidity, andback-office functions.The setupwas largely identical across these so-called white-label entities, with onlythe branding swapped out, the order said. Netrios controlled the products onoffer, and leveraged forex made up most of the activity, alongside metals,cryptocurrencies, and equities.Customerstypically funded accounts with crypto, sending bitcoin, ether, or tether to amargin account at a gateway and wallet provider that an affiliate of the twofirms partly owned, the CFTC said. Netrios controlled those margin accounts.None of thetrades for US retail customers ended in actual delivery of the underlying assetwithin 28 days. That window matters, because trades settled inside it can avoidthe rules that would force them onto a registered exchange. Thecustomers involved were not eligible contract participants, the wealthier orinstitutional traders US law allows to trade off-exchange.Red Acrehandled the customer side. The order said it ran onboarding and screening,answered technical questions, dealt with complaints, and provided marketing,while knowing Netrios was facilitating off-exchange trades for retailAmericans.The Group BehindTradeLocker and FunderProNeither theCFTC nor the parallel US securities case names the consumer brands tied to thetwo firms, but these are not obscure operators. Netrios andRed Acre belong to the same fintechgroup that owns or co-owns several businesses familiar to prop firms andoffshore brokers.Thatportfolio includes TradeLocker, a trading platform that gained ground amongprop firms after MetaQuotes restricted MT4 and MT5 access in 2024, andFunderPro, a proprietary trading firm the group runs as a division of Red Acre. The grouphas also been linked to crypto and payments brands including Zeply,Cryptopanic, and Cryptochill, according to company statements and prior FinanceMagnates.comcoverage.TradeLockerhas built most of its momentum on the prop side, and its partner network leansheavily toward prop firms and offshore CFD brokerages, as FinanceMagnates.com reported in May. FunderProhas spent the past two years adding platforms and features, including a cTrader integration. The CFTC said the white-labelbusiness at the center of its case stopped operating at the end of September2025.A Familiar US Crackdown onOffshore OperatorsThe casefits a long run of US action against firms that solicit American retail traderswithout registering. The CFTC keeps a public "RED List" ofunregistered foreign operators, and it has repeatedly added FX andcrypto-linked brandsover the years.It alsolands in a corner of the market that rarely draws enforcement: the white-labeland broker-as-a-service providers that hand brokers and prop firms a ready-madebusiness. Rivals inthat space include Spotware, whose cTrader platform added prop-firm demoaccounts in October 2025, plus MatchTrader and DXtrade, which sell turnkeysetups to new brokers.Theregulator's problem was not the white-label model itself but where it pointed.By letting retail Americans trade leveraged forex and crypto off-exchange, theorder said, the operation carried out business that US law reserves forregistered exchanges. TheSecurities and Exchange Commission brought its own case over the same conductthe same day, and the CFTC credited the Central Bank of Ireland, the SeychellesFinancial Services Authority, and the Malta Financial Services Authority fortheir help.For Netriosand Red Acre, the order mostly closes the book on a business they had alreadywound down. The firms stopped the leveraged retail commodity activity at theend of September 2025, the CFTC said, months before the settlement landed.This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.