Hi, thanks for the replies.
For the how and why, it was based on a few wins and a lot of lies, as I've read many others were. It's standard practice it seems. Now I've found this site and read the other stories then no, not another cent. There is a site that scams the 401 spammers for fun which is really interesting, if only there was a way of doing that back.
It was 25k USD in total, a few thousand at a time, he kept giving me wins each time up to this point then tried the 60 second method which I'd seen on youtube to tried it and burnt about 30k which was in the account. Then he (true to his word) bumped the account back up to 25k. Then got another win. I was about 31k in holding which was about equal to the amount of bonuses and hadn't heard from him for 2 weeks so i tried to withdraw it to discover that you can't withdraw bonuses. So I said what's going on because he'd not kept in touch and straight away he gave me another win, bump up to 34k, then gave me another trade which blew the lot. He then said I was being passed to recovery (which again is pretty clever because it makes you feel safe) but as soon as recovery asked for more money I'm thinking a) I don't have anything left to use and b) putting more money in is not a recovery and c) where's the promised 25k protected (you'll see in the transcript all the way he's promising protection). I asked him about options insurance as that's on the trade screen and I'd seen other options traders using insurance but he didn't answer.
The complete transcript for the account manager is here
http://smallism.org/images/jackw.transcript.txt
and the very short one from the recovery department here
http://smallism.org/images/david h bdb.txt
It's really bad timing as well as I'm working away from home for a few weeks. on which point, I have to log off, but I'll be back as soon as possible.
Again thank you for the comments. I spoke to Antony on Skype and he said "there is no non-nuclear option", but hey, I'm all about the nuclear options if I can rally the masses.
Edward