AsstModerator
FPA Forums and Reviews Admin
- Messages
- 5,740
Rizwan Awan Gets His Third Strike
TrendsFx.com Managed Accounts Scam
TrendsFx.com Managed Accounts Scam
In February 2012, a new Performance Test submission came in for Trends Fx from Pakistan while the company was claiming to be in the United Arab Emirates. That rang a bell with me, so I asked testing to hold off on approving it. I remembered that Rizwan Awan already had abused the FPA's Performance Testing program once when he submitted a performance test for his Elite Financials scam company under a fake name. Rizwan has a history of claiming that his companies are in the United Arab Emirates, but all of his contacts have come from Pakistan.
I started checking TrendsFx out and found an old email mentioning that Rizwan had once owned a company by that name. I was about to put a warning on the Trends review page when I was contacted by both Rizwan and a prior victim of his. Both asked me to hold off on declaring that TrendsFx was a scam. They both assured me that Trends Fx was owned by someone else, had 4 traders who were not Rizwan, and that Rizwan was just a salesman, not a trader. The plan was supposed to be that Rizwan's commissions for bringing in clients would be used to pay off the debts he owed to his old victims.
In Rizwan Awan's prior scam companies, Next-Consultancy and Elite-Financials, Rizwan made false claims of having insurance to cover losses. He also falsely claimed that drawdown limits would be carefully observed. In both cases, trading started out successfully, then suddenly huge trades were made with no regard to risk management. In both cases, this caused clients to suffer large losses that should not have happened. In both cases, all claims of insurance or other money to pay back the losses proved to be false.
This company seemed a little different. All 4 accounts showed different trading styles. There was no claim of insurance, just a clear promise to stop trading immediately if drawdown exceeded a certain level. Both Rizwan and his victim argued that the old scam findings were against Rizwan's companies, not Rizwan as a person. They kept emphasizing that the new company shouldn't be penalized since Rizwan Awan was only working in sales, not managing accounts.
I then contacted a number of Rizwan's other victims. Most of them were aware of Trends Fx and some were allowing the company to trade accounts for them. I should have immediately submitted TrendFx to the Scam Investigations Committee the moment I knew Rizwan had any association with it. I foolishly believed promises that safeguards were in place to preserve accounts from his usual mismanagement. I settled for putting a large cautionary note on the review page advising traders not to open accounts while the FPA was checking out the company.
In March, two of the four managed plans suffered large losses from ignoring risk management. Both Rizwan and his prior victim blamed the traders and said that they had been fired. I settled for adding Rizwan's name to the review page and added a large warning note about the blown accounts. The warning did recommend that traders revoke their LPOAs.
In May, the victim contacted me and apologized. He told me that Rizwan had seized control of client accounts and was trading them into the ground. Tens of thousands of dollars of client funds were lost to generate a few hundred dollars of IB commissions. The victim's theory is that Rizwan owes debts in Pakistan and that he was forced to do this to provide money to debt collectors. If so, the debt collectors were idiots. It would have been easy for Rizwan to show them how much larger the account management fee would have been at the end of the month.
It no longer matters if Rizwan destroyed client accounts because a debt collector held a knife to his throat or if he got drunk and decided to trade for fun. Rizwan promised to not trade client accounts and he did. I am also told that the alleged owner of TrendsFx is really just one of Rizwan's close relatives. This means that Rizwan was really in charge of the company the whole time.
I regret having wasted time and effort giving Rizwan Awan a second chance with Elite Financials. I regret wasting more time giving him a third chance with TrendsFx.com. I am going to make certain that he gets no more chances.
In light of this, I have requested that the Scam Investigations Committee make it very clear that this scam finding does not just apply to TrendsFx as a company. Rizwan Awan himself is officially considered to be a scammer. As of now, if Rizwan Awan is found to own or work for any forex company, that company will immediately be considered to be a scam by the FPA. All forex companies are warned not to work with this man.
In case there is an innocent person with the same name, Here is a copy of the driver's license of the scammer named Rizwan Awan...
Official FPA Scam Finding against Rizwan Awan and TrendsFx
TrendsFx.com Review Page
Next-Consultancy.com Review Page
Article about Next-Consultancy scam
Article on how to avoid managed forex account scams
