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Tag: binary options

  • CSA: ‘No Business Is Currently Registered Or Authorized To Market Or Sell Binary Options In Canada’

    Offshore scammers have their eyes on your pocket book.  “[N]o business is currently registered or authorized to market or sell binary options in Canada,” the Canadian Securities Administrators said in an Investor Alert today.

    The risk is not merely the loss of money, CSA said.

    “Canadians are exposing themselves to the high risk of identity theft and fraud when signing up for these platforms that often request their credit card information,” said Louis Morisset, chair of the CSA and president and CEO of the Autorité des marchés financiers, Quebec’s secutities regulator. “The CSA warns investors that if they deal with these platforms, they risk the threat of thousands of dollars in unauthorized withdrawals on their credit cards and of being stuck with high-interest payments for a non-existent investment.”

    Binary options, CSA said, “are like ‘bets’ on how an asset (currency, stock, etc.) will perform in a limited amount of time – they are ‘all or nothing’ wagers, similar to gambling. However, even when investors see virtual gains, they often cannot access these profits as they don’t exist.”

    Read the CSA alert.

    On March 15, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced charges against two purported binary-options firms purportedly operating on the web from Israel.

    CFTC identified the defendants as Vault Options Ltd. and Global Trader 365.

    From the CFTC (italics added):

    In addition to alleging that Vault and GT 365 solicited more than $1 million from at least 50 U.S. customers, the Complaint alleges that Vault and GT 365 defrauded their customers by, among other things, misrepresenting and omitting the likelihood of profit and loss that customer make trading binary options, falsely claiming that customer funds were insured against losses, fraudulently inducing customers to send them more money before initial funds could be returned, and misappropriating customer funds. According to the Complaint, while Vault and GT 365’s websites touted large profits, many customers lost nearly all of their funds sometimes within days or a few weeks.




  • ‘Bacon’ Crumbles — And Yet Props Up MAPS

    EDITOR’S NOTE: The interconnectivity of fraud schemes is one of the core dangers of the HYIP sphere. Stolen proceeds continually cycle between and among scams, making banks and payment vendors virtual warehouses for cross-border criminals and their serial enablers. The problem may be intensifying. More and more HYIP schemes appear to be using script kits — essentially prefabricated websites — in which emerging schemes simply plug in their information and graphics. These kits allow schemes to show ads for other schemes, including competitive schemes.

    Simply put, modern scams are driving business to other modern scams.

    As the story below illustrates, the cycle may not be broken even if a particular scheme suspends payouts.

    **____________________**

    baconmapssmall“Bring The Bacon Home,” a Ponzi-board “program” popularized in part by Achieve Community hucksters, reportedly has crumbled.

    The circumstance surrounding the collapse, however, demonstrates that BTBH is contributing to ongoing harm. Indeed, the “program” continues to publish ads for other HYIP schemes, including “MyAdvertisingPays.”

    MAPS, as it is known, is referenced in a prospective class-action complaint filed against multiple TelexFree figures and financial vendors in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in December 2014.

    TelexFree was alleged by the SEC last year to have been a combined pyramid and Ponzi scheme. The trustee in the TelexFree bankruptcy case says the cross-border “program” may have gathered as much as $1.8 billion.

    TelexFree and MAPS are known to have had promoters in common. It was learned last month that Shaun Smith, an alleged “winner” in the Zeek Rewards scheme broken up by the SEC in 2012, also is promoting MAPS.

    Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell is suing Smith and more than 9,000 other alleged “winners,” amid claims they are in possession of proceeds that flowed from a Ponzi scheme.

    Despite the reported collapse of BTBH, it continues not only to publish ads for MAPS, but other schemes.

    BTBH, which had claimed $40 turned into $1,800, encountered a failed launch in January. The “program” then embarked on a self-styled “relaunch,” but that, too, appears now to have failed — leaving investors holding the bag.

    Before Achieve Community collapsed under the weight of an SEC investigation announced in February in which the agency alleged Achieve was a combined Ponzi- and pyramid scheme that had gathered $3.8 million, any number of Achieve promoters also were promoting other cross-border scams.

    Another of the scams currently advertised on BTBH is “MooreFund,” as the screen shot below demonstrates. MooreFund also was promoted by Achieve members.

    baconmoorefundsmall

    As the PP Blog reported on Feb. 24 (italics added):

    Like Achieve, MooreFund has a presence on well-known Ponzi-scheme forums such as MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold. The “program” purports to offer four investment plans. These promise absurd daily interest rates of between 1.5 percent and 3 percent, with “compounding” available on three of the four plans and tiered recruitment commissions offered on all four.

    MooreFund, in turn, was promoted online alongside a “binary options” scheme known as SpotFN that recently became the subject of a cease-and-desist order in Missouri.

    See April 12 report on BTBH at BehindMLM.com.