Fighting For MF Global Customers

CNN Money:

Koutoulas, chief executive of three-year-old commodities fund Typhon Capital Management, stumbled into the courtroom drama accidentally. His Chicago firm, which conducts the bulk of its business in the futures market, discovered shortly after MF Global's bankruptcy that $55 million of its $70 million under management had been dragged into the proceedings. This was a surprise, because, by law, customer funds are supposed to be kept completely segregated from a brokerage firm's own assets. That wasn't the case with MF Global. For Koutoulas and tens of thousands of other MF customers, it was a rude awakening.
"My goal is real simple: getting everybody's money back," he says. "And I think we have a very high likelihood of doing just that." In early November, Koutoulas, along with fellow Chicago futures trader, John Roe – son of Tennessee Republican congressman Dr. Phil Roe – founded the Commodity Customer Coalition, a grassroots group that seeks to represent the complex legal interests of MF Global's former clients. In the space of just a few weeks, the group has amassed more than 8,000 members, received tens of thousands of dollars of donations and singlehandedly proven that enough people, when banded together, can change the course of a multibillion-dollar bankruptcy.

The article also mentions that JP Morgan and Bank of America are receiving inside information as part of the creditors' committee, while also offering to buy MF Global customers claims for pennies on the dollar.  Meanwhile, JP Morgan is likely holding a portion of said customers' money.