Earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an Order Assessing Civil Penalties against City Power Marketing, LLC (City Power) and its founder and sole owner, K. Stephen Tsingas[1] (collectively, Respondents) for violating section 222 of the Federal Power Act (FPA) and section 1c.2 of the Commission’s regulations, which prohibit energy market manipulation.[2]
According to FERC, Respondents entered into fraudulent “no risk” Up-to-Congestion (UTC) trades in PJM’s market to earn excessive amounts of Marginal Loss Surplus Allocation (MLSA) payments made to transmission customers. The Commission also found that City Power and Mr. Tsingas, in writing and orally, denied the existence of relevant and material instant messages (IM) when responding to the Office of Enforcement (OE) Staff’s (Staff) investigation in violation of section 35.41(b) of the Commission’s regulations, which prohibits a seller, such as City Power, from submitting false or misleading information or omitting material information to the Commission and its Staff unless it exercises due diligence to prevent such occurrences.