The Regulators Are Fighting A New Wave Of Fraud
Regulation Is Helping Like Bad Medicine
Regulation, like bad medicine, is helping the binary options industry. It is making it harder for the scammers to operate but at the same time may kill the patient. The good news is that there are still jurisdictions friendly to binary options trading, the bad news is the scams and fraud have turned their focus in that direction.
In the latest news the Belize IFSC, a regulatory agency friendly to binary options regulation, has issued a warning against Matrix-Option operating the website Matrixoption.com. The IFSC says the broker is operating illegally and using a forged license. The warning specifically notes the license and regulation numbers cited by Matrix-Option as well as a link to an alleged license that the IFSC says are complete forgeries. We are not surprised, shady brokers have used this ploy before with the IFSC and other regulators. The one that pops to mind first is Banc De Binary.
The IFSC is also warning against a cryptocurrency operation claiming to hold an IFSC business license. The firm, BTCHome Mining, claims to operate a licensed forex exchange with the added bonus of cryptocurrency mining. Traders can reinvest their profits into a cryptocurrency mining account (fraud) to better their returns. The IFSC says operations like this, claiming profits and returns that seem too good to be true, usually are.
Polish regulators stepped into the binary options fray when they raided the offices of a call center operating in their country. The regulator says Amplio Investments has been offering and soliciting investment advice without a license, a felony in their country. The raid resulted in the arrest of 36 employees including 20 top officials.
The Polish regulator has also issued a warning against ExBino. ExBino is an off-shore based broker operating without a license in Poland or anywhere else, and using the same old high-pressure tactics that have plagued binary options since the very beginning. Poland’s Financial Services Authority, the KNF, cautions the public to avoid leveraged CFD’s, forex and binary options because most people lose money.
In some good news the Tel Aviv court has issued a ruling in favor of a woman who lost her life savings to binary options. She claims she lost nearly $140,000 to a scam run by Manx Online Trading. The plaintiffs claim the defendant knew the risks involved but the judge did not believe them. The defendant was awarded 60% of her losses due to bad investment advice. The judge did point out that the defendant was not without blame, having sought a higher channel of return for investments in her portfolio.