The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a civil injunctive action against a Canadian, accusing him of running a “prime” bank scam.

The action, filed in the District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, is against Frederick Gilliland, a Canadian citizen who lived in Florida at the time. The SEC alleges that he promoted a multimillion-dollar, “prime” bank securities fraud raising more than $20 million from at least 200 investors in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The complaint also charges that relief defendant MM ACMC Banque de Commerce Inc. was unjustly enriched by the receipt of $20 million of the ill-gotten gains Gilliland raised through his fraudulent schemes and seeks disgorgement of those funds from MBC.

The commission’s complaint alleges that Gilliland told investors that their money would be used to purchase and trade discounted financial instruments issued by purported “prime” banks, a term referring to the Top 250 or “Prime” world banks, in a clandestine overseas market to generate huge returns for the investor.

The secret trading market Gilliland described to investors does not exist, the SEC says. The complaint also alleges that in order to induce people to invest in these fraudulent trading programs, Gilliland made material misrepresentations and omissions of fact to investors concerning, among other things, the existence of the trading programs, unreasonable claims of expected profits from the programs, and the purported safe, risk-free nature of the programs.