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发帖数: 11530 | 1 Forex Investors May Face $1 Billion Loss as Trade Site Vanishes
By David Evans Nov 12, 2014 11:01 PM CT
Michael Sterling, identified as Secure's CEO on an infomercial that aired on
the site... Read More
Related
Video Touts Secure Investment's Forex Trading
The first time Rajibuddin Mandal, a family doctor in Birmingham, England,
tried his hand at trading currencies online, he lost 2,000 British pounds.
From that experience, he concluded that the foreign-exchange market was too
big, too complex and too hazardous for amateur investors like himself. He
decided he needed help from the professionals.
One site he found on the Internet in early 2013 seemed to be speaking
directly to him. Called secureinvestment.com, the website acknowledged that
currency trading was risky.
“Ninety percent of traders in forex end up losing money,” it said. Secure
Investment said it offered something safer: It made trading decisions for
investors and guaranteed their principal. That meant, Mandal thought, that
even if he didn’t make money, the worst that could happen would be that he
would break even, Bloomberg Markets will report in its December issue.
Secure Investment said that it traded in excess of $4.8 billion daily for
more than 100,000 investors in 140 countries. The company said it posted all
of its trades every day, showing which ones were winners and which were
losers. The site said investors had averaged net gains of 1 percent each
trading day during the past five years.
Photographer: Jeffery Salter/Bloomberg Markets
Jaren Mark, a Florida doctor, says he monitored Secure's website for nine
months before investing.
Mandal viewed video testimonials by satisfied customers, including one who
said he had watched his investment grow for years, preparing him for a
stress-free retirement.
‘Nothing I Saw’
Over three months, Mandal, 41, says he carefully followed Secure Investment
’s trading results on its website.
“There was nothing that I saw that led me to believe there could be any
kind of problem,” he says.
The site said that those average gains of 1 percent daily couldn’t be
compounded into an annual return. Even without compounding, those kinds of
daily returns would amount to an annual gain of about 250 percent -- or more
than 25 times the average annual return of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index
, with dividends reinvested, for the past 50 years. Secure Investment didn’
t provide that kind of context.
In May and June last year, Mandal and his wife, Wasima, 37, also a physician
, invested $30,000 each with Secure, which required customers to use U.S.
dollars. The Mandals swapped pounds for $60,000, using a bank. Following
instructions from Secure, they then wired the money to banks in Australia
and Cyprus to open their accounts.
Logging into the company’s website regularly, they watched as Secure traded
the dollar versus the euro. Secure’s website showed that their accounts
had soared in value to a total of $245,000 -- a fourfold increase -- in just
10 months.
Photographer: Nancy Newberry/Bloomberg Markets
David Kane, a single dad with three boys, says he'd hoped his Secure
investment would... Read More
Irrelevant Law
Mandal says he decided to withdraw some money in March. In an e-mailed
response, Secure said he’d have to wait. It cited issues with the U.S.
Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which is a Treasury Department rule that
applies to U.S. citizens using foreign accounts -- a law that was
irrelevant to Mandal, who’s a U.K. citizen. The March 5 e-mail said Mandal
would get the money in a few days.
“Thank you for your patience,” it said.
Mandal says he wasn’t yet suspicious. He got another e-mail from Secure on
April 30.
“Our Technical Department is currently working on system updates,” it said
. “Our company sincerely apologizes for any temporary glitches that may
occur.”
The next day, the website went offline. It never returned. Neither did the
Mandals’ investment. As far as he knows, their entire $60,000 has
disappeared forever.
“Every day, I saw they were making me profits,” Mandal says. “And then it
’s suddenly gone. It gave me psychological pain and stress. I feel very
embarrassed.”
Plenty Others
If their money is lost for good, then the Mandals may have plenty of company
. Investors around the world may have lost more than $1 billion, based on
data posted on Secure’s website and viewed by Bloomberg Markets two months
before the site shut down.
“This type of forex fraud is an assault on the international financial
system -- victimizing investors in multiple countries while concealing where
the wrongdoing took place,” says U.S. Senator Carl Levin, who is chairman
of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and became aware of Secure
Investment when asked about it by Bloomberg Markets.
Customers in 11 countries on five continents say they have seen their money
evaporate with Secure. Twenty-five investors interviewed say Secure, which
was incorporated in Panama in 2008, had instructed them to wire money to
banks in Australia, Cyprus, Latvia and Poland.
The company’s website provided an explanation: “From time to time, Secure
Investment may change bank account information, because it chooses the
financial partner that currently offers more profitable cooperation
conditions.”
Never Revealed
Secure never revealed its true location and provided its clients with only
some bank and related-company names, along with its call center’s toll-free
phone numbers in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, the U.K. and the U.S.
Secure Investment lured customers by creating its own good reputation and by
publishing a seemingly successful trading record on its elaborate website.
It was all a lie. The company’s claims to have offices and a large staff
were also false. At least some of its so-called customer testimonials were
actually delivered by actors.
The deception worked -- for a while. In March, Secure’s website was more
popular than Forex.com, run by Gain Captial Holding Inc., the second-largest
U.S.-based, over-the-counter forex trading firm, according to Alexa.com, a
unit of Amazon.com Inc. that tracks page views of millions of websites.
The most common search sending traffic to Secure was the phrase “secure
investment.” The average visitor to Secure’s site stayed for almost seven
minutes and viewed seven pages, according to Alexa.
Financial Web
Secure crafted a tangled financial web to harvest and hide investor money by
setting up companies with different names incorporated in Belize, the
British Virgin Islands and the U.K. Secure asked clients in e-mails to wire
money to bank accounts held by those firms.
By using related companies, Secure obscured the paper trail of investor
funds that would end up with the firm.
The only public evidence that authorities have looked into Secure Investment
comes from Panama. In July 2013, the website of Panama’s securities
regulator, SMV, warned that the company wasn’t licensed or authorized to
trade currencies.
The regulator also said Secure Investment listed a false Panama City address
as its headquarters.
The office addresses that Secure’s website listed in Hong Kong, London and
Sydney were also phony. All of those were at sites run by international
office leasing company Regus Plc. (RGU) London-based spokesman Andrew Brown
researched his company’s records and found that Secure never used any of
those locations.
Video Testimonials
Secure’s website included 54 video testimonials, supposedly from investors;
a six-minute infomercial; and three animated cartoons.
One testimonial is from a bearded man wearing a jacket and tie. After
introducing himself as Michael, he praises Secure in an 80-second video. He
says he’s pleased with his return on investment.
“Every year, I’ve watched my ROI grow,” he says. “I’m getting closer
and closer to my retirement goals. They take all the stress out of it.”
Michael is actually Al Eddy from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Eddy, 42, who has
recorded video endorsements for a fee, says he was hired by an intermediary
for Secure and paid $20 to perform as Michael. He says he’s never invested
with Secure, nor traded forex nor even purchased a share of stock. Nothing
he said in his endorsement is true, Eddy says, adding that he no longer does
testimonials.
‘Actors Lie’
“I’m an actor; actors lie for a living,” says Chuck Hall, another paid
performer who did a testimonial for Secure. In his endorsement, Hall, 64, of
Fernandina Beach, Florida, didn’t give any name. He told viewers he easily
withdrew money from Secure.
“Had no problem at all doing that,” he says in the video. “I’m thinking
now about investing in forex again. I think they’re pretty dependable.”
Hall now says Secure’s intermediary paid him $4 and gave him a script. “I
don’t even know what forex is,” he says.
The Rules
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission prohibits false endorsements and requires
disclosure if the advertiser pays for approbation. The Secure testimonials
didn’t say the company had paid for them. In the U.K., the Advertising
Standards Authority, an industry self-regulator, bans fake testimonials.
A two-minute animation distributed by Secure depicts a chance meeting
between two friends stuck in traffic on a highway. Pale-faced Ben, driving a
beat-up brown subcompact with a dirty windshield, pulls up beside his
tanned friend Nick.
Nick, driving a shiny new green convertible, says he’s just returned from a
Caribbean vacation and recently moved to a house by a lake. The men have
the following exchange:
“How can you afford all this?” Ben asks in a nerdy voice.
“I invest online in forex,” Nick replies in a deep baritone. He sports a
pompadour and an unbuttoned red Hawaiian shirt.
“So you’re a forex trader like that guy Paul at the gym?” Ben asks. “I
heard he lost a lot of money.”
‘No Risk’
“No, I am not a forex expert,” Nick says. “If you’re not a forex
professional, chances are you could lose your money. My money is managed by
professionals from Secure Investment.”
Ben asks whether it’s very risky.
“There is no risk to the initial investment,” Nick says. “In the past
five years, they have had only a few days with negative results. I’m
earning about 1 percent of profit daily.” He adds that he can withdraw his
money at any time.
Ben has heard enough. He asks Nick how he can get started.
Mandal, the U.K. doctor who, along with his wife, invested $60,000, followed
Secure’s postings and studied its advertisements. The details of daily
trading results, the pitches in the videos and the testimonials won him over.
“I think they did it very cleverly,” he says.
Mandal runs a family practice under contract with Britain’s National Health
Service. He, his wife, another physician and two residents tend to 5,000
patients.
Now that Mandal realizes he was duped by Secure, he says the company should
be held accountable.
‘Put Into Jail’
“I want these people to be stopped so in the future, nobody will dare do
this again,” he says. “It is very important to do something against them.
I think they should definitely be put into jail.”
Because Secure had no real headquarters and existed on the Internet only, an
investigation would be challenging.
“Law enforcement will have to focus on the bank accounts, wire transfers
and financial transactions that -- with international cooperation and some
luck -- might be used to get behind the anonymous shell companies hiding the
perpetrators and stolen funds,” says Senator Levin, a Democrat from
Michigan.
David Kane, a Houston oil industry technical support manager, says he found
his way to Secure because he had stopped trusting bankers and brokers after
the 2008 financial crisis. Kane, a single father raising three teenage boys,
invested $2,500 in Secure in July 2013. His account grew to more than $4,
000 by February 2014, according to his online statements.
In an interview on March 10, seven weeks before secureinvestment.com
vanished, Kane, 52, said he was comfortable with his investment.
‘Very Responsive’
“I e-mailed a number of times with questions and concerns, and they’ve
been very responsive in answering them,” he said.
He was hoping his gains would fund his sons’ college tuition.
“I would like to think that this is the trading vehicle for the next
millennium,” Kane said. “People have been ripped off for so long by
brokers, 401(k) managers and mutual fund managers.”
Kane made a successful withdrawal in February.
“I wanted 500 bucks as a test to be sure I could get it back,” Kane said
in March. Secure wired him his cash through a money-transfer company, Mayzus
Financial Services Ltd., from Czech Savings Bank in Prague. “I almost
kicked myself in the ass for pulling that out, because that’s $500 more
that could have been earning me 1.21 percent per day,” Kane said.
By May 13, two weeks after the website shut down and two months after his
first interview with Bloomberg Markets, Kane had a different view.
‘Too Good’
“We suspected it was too good to be true,” he said. “I’m glad I pulled
out $500. What is most bothersome is the loss of the dream.”
Jaron Mark, a medical resident at a hospital in Tampa, Florida, says he
spent nine months seeking a safe investment before he chose Secure. During
that time, he monitored Secure’s website routinely, watched the daily
trading reports showing consistent success and decided to invest with the
company.
In April, he wired $10,000 to a bank in Latvia so that Secure could trade
forex for him. Two weeks later, the Secure website was gone. At first, Mark,
31, says he wasn’t too concerned.
“They’d go down for maintenance temporarily,” he says. “Then they’d
come back up, like clockwork. This time around, they didn’t.” He says he
lost the majority of his savings. “I don’t make a lot of money,” he says.
“It took me a long time to earn it. I’m hurt and upset. I don’t have
much hope. I feel like a fool.”
The man identified by Secure as its chief executive officer used the name
Michael Sterling. A Secure infomercial on the Web featuring Sterling begins
with an exterior shot of the New York Stock Exchange. It shows gray-bearded
Sterling describing his excitement about Secure.
‘Very Special’
“It’s really a very special feeling when you are doing something new,
something unusual, which differs a lot from what others are doing,” he says.
Sterling then addresses Secure employees at their modern office building, as
meetings in glass-walled conference rooms are shown. Interspersed through
the infomercial are 30 more scenes of Manhattan, including Wall Street,
Times Square and the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Secure’s customer-service
center never responded to repeated requests for an interview with Sterling.
Early on May 1, just hours after Secure’s website was gone, Bloomberg
Markets was able to reach a customer-support representative. Francisco
Ramirez was still staffing the site’s chat function. He was asked what
happened.
“At the moment, there is technical maintenance going on with our website,”
he said. “It will be back at any point of time. We are sorry for the
inconvenience. After some time, it should work fine.”
No one at Secure Investment has responded to calls or e-mails since that day.
For Related News and Information:
Editors: Jonathan Neumann, Gail Roche
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Neumann at
[email protected]
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发帖数: 11530 | 2 Who r the fools who believe 1+% average daily gain in currency trading is at
all possible! |
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