GUILTY Case# 2011-082 | cmingoti vs www.hfx.com

[cmingoti]

At what point a human can get! My God! What world is this we live?

I feel sorry for you Mark. I hope you have peace in your heart!

 

[Pharaoh]

Mark,

What her IB did or did not do ad what HFX did or did not pay him is 100% irrelevant to the money in Carla's account.

As a broker, you have the right to end your dealing with clients. This right doesn't include the confiscation of profits of undisputed trades. If I drive the people at my local bank crazy, they can close my account, but they can't legally keep my money.

I see you didn't really cover the questions I had. I'll ask them one last time:


1. What was the P/L of the 98.5% of trades you admit were valid?

2. What was the P/L of the 1.5% of trades you dispute?

3. What does HFX think the P/L of those trades should have been if there had not been a liquidity provider issue?

4. Why didn't HFX lock out the ability to execute trades during those few seconds of claimed vulnerability?


Your lack of direct answers has me ready to recommend that everyone vote guilty.

With or without answers, I recommend that the undisputed trades be paid now. Further negotiations on the disputed trades can take place separately.

 

[Mark Polen]

Replay to Pharaoh

Dear Sir,

per your questions:
1+2, it is really not important if she made $10 or $10,000 from those frauds. she tried to earn money in a way tat is not acceptable according to all trading roles. let's say she made only $100, does it means we need to forgive her?!? and only if it was over $5000 we should punish her.
we gave her money back and said we don't want to do business with her.
By the way, last week she send us an email asking to maybe find a way to give her a bit more money and then she will delete this case, which shows she KNOWS she did something wrong.

Per questions 3, she made about 300% more on her money.

Per question 4, if we knew about it in advance we would have close this ability, now we fixed it and you can't do this any more.

I hope you can understand our point of view, we don't think that paying this will solve this case, and we don't believe in paying just to close this case. Forex companies is dealing with all kind of frauds on a daily basis, and this case is no diffidence.

HFX would like to put this case behind us, and move forward, we hope you can make the right choice in this case

Regards

Mark

 

[cmingoti]

For all!

Last week I sent an email to the HFX trying to solve this in a friendly manner. But before I entered with the Moderator of contnat thread asking your opinion about (whether or not to send the email trying an amicable agreement).

Only after the approval of the Moderator (Bill) is sent to the email below (always with a copy to the moderator cso).

17/nov/11 10:10 (GMT-3)

"Hello Charles,


I am willing to resolve this in a peaceful consistent manner, because we know That the Greater problems will be far if we take this forward.

The Damage Is Already my whole, However, I am willing to talk!

If you are willing to resolve peacefully, speak quickly.

Regards

Carla Mingote
--pt-------------------

Bom dia Charles,




Estou disposta a resolver isso de uma maneira pacífica, pois sabemos que os transtornos serão muito maiores se levarmos isso a frente.

O prejuízo já é todo meu, entretando, estou disposta a conversar!

Caso esteja disposto a resolver pacificamente, pronuncie-se rapidamente.

Regards

Carla Mingoti


It is felt that this company is not willing to acknowledge their abuse.

Please Mr. Moderator, I look forward to the conclusion of this case!

Regards.

Carla

 

[JRusk]

Dear Mark,
What you and your company is failing to understand is; you ethically do not have the right to seize the legitimate profits on this account. It is unethical to take the role of "jude, Jury, and executioner" at most your company has a right to seize the trades in question (which I don't believe anyway). Make your mom proud and pay the money owed to Carla.

 

[Pip Me Up]

Hello All,

First of all I would like to point that HFX is a worldwide broker which enable her traders the best trading conditions in the market:
1. We do not have Limit & stop level limitations from the current market price. Trader may set a limit order with less than 1 pip from the market price!
2. We do not have any limitation for the time a trader must hold open position
3. We enable scalping
4. We enable EA’s from all kind
5. We have the best feed in the market
6. We provide a wide array of financial instruments to trade with.


Regarding the complaint of the trader, Mrs. Carla Maria Mingoti from Brasil:

We have a found a number of trades which in she took advantage to hack the system and is considered 100% as abusive and offensive behavior. This kind of behavior is kept only for professionals and not for the “Average Trader” in which she was able to identify the only 1 time frame in which HFX’s feed price was out of the market price! This is rarely happens but sometimes, has a result that HFX is working with a number of feed providers, there is a situation when all feed providers are restart their program at the same time and in a time frame of a few seconds, a professional trader can identify the opportunity to open position in an off market price, in order to generate a certain profit.
The trader cannot claim in any case that he is an innocent trader who is a victim in this case. This pattern of trading is kept only for professionals hackers! It is not an incident when the positions were opened exactly during midnight (00:00 MT4 server time).

We would like to make it perfectly clear that according to HFX’s policy, we have zero tolerance for fraud; we don’t want to deal with such traders. It is also written in the trading agreement:

“ABUSIVE OR OFFENSIVE BEHAVIOR
82. Abusive or offensive behavior will not be tolerated on Company’s Web-site or with any of our staff. Any violation of this policy will result in a suspension of your use of the services or such other action as may be reasonably required by Company to ensure compliance. In addition, you are not entitled to make untrue and/or malicious and/or damaging comments with regard to the Company operation in any media or forum.
FRAUDULENT ACTIVITIES AND PROHIBITED TRANSACTIONS
83. Company has a zero tolerance policy towards fraudulent activity. If, in Company’s sole determination, you are found to have attempted to defraud Company or any other Client of any of the services in any way, or if Company suspects you of fraudulent payment, including use of stolen credit cards, or any other fraudulent activity (including but not limited to any chargeback, or other reversal of a payment) or prohibited transaction (including but not limited to money laundering or account take over), Company reserves the right to suspend and/or close your Account and to share this information (together with your identity) with banks, credit card companies, and other such appropriate enforcement agencies.
84. We reserve the right to void and withhold any or all funds made by any person or group of persons where we have reasonable grounds to believe that said person or group of persons is acting or has acted in liaison in an attempt to defraud or damage Company and/or the services in any way.
85. In the interests of data protection and security you are expressly prohibited from posting information or contacting our Clients to offer or promote any offers, products or services without the express written permission of Company.”

Please find below a sample of one of the trades which emphasis the pattern of trading the trader used and is considered as abusive behavior:
Please find below an explanation for one of the abusive acts by the client:

The above transaction clearly illustrates our main claim, that it was not an innocent client that used to trade at our company, in good faith and without bias, but a sophisticated client taking advantage of a technology loophole in the trading system. The user has recognizes a time frame of few seconds in order to gain assured profit.

Please take a close look at one of his transaction as the client identifies that the EUR USD quote is off market, and execute a 5 lots position (500,000) which is being close after 15 seconds!!

Purple line – reflects the liquidity provider. One of our liquidity providers provided big spread and this was the reason for no market prices for a few seconds

Green line – the real market price at that time. Trader identifies that HFX’s current quote is off market and decides to make an attempt to defraud the system. We wonder why at this time, the trader decides to open a 5 lots position and not 0.5 or 1 lot like he usually trades. We would like to mark that this position opened at 00:01:13 (Server Time) at 1.35668 which is actually the bid price (below the green line)

Pink line- the market price the client sees at HFX’s trading platform. We would like to mark that this position opened at 00:01:13 (Server Time) at 1.35668 which is actually the bid price (below the green line as you may see in the chart). Just to make it simple, the client knows that if the platform will execute the trade, as soon as HFX’s quote will reflect the real market price, the position will be closed in the Take profit rate.

At the time of 00:01:13, the position was closed in the take profit rate the trader placed as he opened the trade.

We would like to make it perfectly clear that HFX’s feed reflects the market price during all trading time.

Only in a few times during the month, a major part of the liquidity providers of our feed provider making a system restart, all of them at the same time. At this part, due to technological failure, a professional “hacker”, who as an “abusive experience “in the online trading, will be able to identify this gap and defraud the system.

As we mentioned before, HFX has zero tolerance for fraud, we don’t want to deal with such traders and we made a decision not to work with this IB or his clients.

However, as an act of good will, and in order to resolve the issue, we have reimbursed the initial funds, both to the IB and to the client, although I might add, we didn’t have to do this.

Mark Polen - HFX

Dear Mark

HFX, haven't satisfied, in the above text or the replies thereafter, as to how, Mrs. Carla Maria Mingoti managed 'to hack the system.' This would imply a serious breach / attack on your trade server/s in order to manipulate the price data and or place a ticket after the event i.e. price data is known and a ticket placed retrospectively.

Your complaint seems to be, although HFX is aware there is a flaw in their system (in HFX's opinion), that a customer of HFX, has increased their account balance, possibly due to privileged information, less than two percent of the time. Based on information which is only likely to be known to HFX and professional traders and has in no way been demonstrated by HFX thus far. Where is this a material breach of the agreement? How is that grounds to penalise Mrs Mingoti? The case has no indication that any abuse or fraud took place by HFX's client thus far.

As a representative of HFX, who has stated that HFX cares about its name, and integrity etc, would it not be prudent to settle the full amount owing to Mrs Mingoti, and cease to act as her Broker. Furthermore, to do as those before me have suggested, and remedy the glitch HFX speaks of by preventing access at that time.

 

[Pharaoh]

Mark,

Per 1 and 2, if she legitimately made $1 or $1,000,000 with 98.5% of her trades, then I strongly suggest that she be paid. If she lost money on those trades, then that should be deducted from her available balance for withdrawals.

Per 3, you keep skipping around on hard numbers. I asked for totals on 1, 2, and 3. Instead, you side-step 1 and 2, and give a percentage on 3. If your system had not been flawed, are you saying that she would have made about 1/3 as much profit? If so, then adjust the trades.

Per 4, I'm glad you've fixed the flaw in your platform.


At this point, I'm entering my vote as Guilty. I recommend you immediately pay the 98.5% of trades that you consider valid and enter into discussions about possible adjustments to profits on the 1.5% that you dispute.

 

[claretblue]

What I cannot understand are the HFX claims of "fraud" and "hacking" - these are criminal acts.
If HFX really believe that criminal acts have been carried out against them, why haven't they
reported them to the relevant authorities???

As someone said earlier, HFX are NOT the judge, jury and executioner in this case. If they believe
there has been some wrongdoing in the profits made, they can freeze those profits and take their case
to a proper court, who will decide the outcome. Making judgement and holding on to those profits is
simple theft (and fraud).

It sounds like HFX do not want the authorities to look at this case. . . . . . . . . .I wonder why?

 

[cmingoti]

Clareblue,

I also had this impression. I'm anxiously awaiting an official notification to solve this in the royal court. So we know who are the people behind the HFX.

Tnx.

Carla

 

[AsstModerator]

The verdict has come in as Guilty. This can be changed to Resolved if HFX can work something out with Carla.