BForex can't keep their story straight, but decided they can keep this trader's money

BForex can't keep their story straight
But decided they can keep this trader's money


Ibham1 had an account with BForex and another account with one of their whitelabels. He says he didn't even know that the WL was part of the same company. He made good profits on his trades. Then his account was frozen and his withdrawals were blocked. This broker decided that he wasn't supposed to have multiple accounts. We've never heard of any broker having an issue with that before, as long as the accounts are under the same name and aren't used to abuse a bonus policy. He was also accused of manipulating the broker's trading system.

After he complained, FPA Investigator Ken had high hopes of a quick resolution. Shortly before, another FPA member who had an issue with BForex reached a successful conclusion to negotiations. BForex's newest representative, Kate, seemed to be ready to talk directly about issues.

Kate and Ibham1 did some discussions by email, but the biggest points came up in Ibham's thread in the FPA's forums. Kate accused Ibham of scalping and taking advantage of technical errors like bad price ticks. Ibham replied by saying that BForex defines scalping as trades held for under 120 seconds and said all of his trades were held for over 120 seconds. He questioned what sort of technical errors could affect more than a small handful of trades.

Kate didn't respond for over 2 weeks, then posted a new and very different story story in the forums. Now BForex accused Ibham of news trading, not scalping. She claimed that BForex's TOS prohibited this and gave them the right to keep his profits. She even posted some parts of Section 8 of the TOS in the forums, writing...

Section 8 and subsections 8.8 and 8.10 to the Bforex trading agreement state:

Section 8 -“Without prior notice to, or receipt of further authority from the Client, BForex shall have the right to close out all or any part of any position or account of Client, upon or at any time after the occurrence of any of the following events:”

Subsection 8.8. - “BForex considers it necessary for its own protection;”

Subsection 8.10 - “Client who engages in what is deemed, illegitimate, unlawful, unethical system abuse, system arbitrage, or any other trade that may be deemed at one point or another as a violation of trading standards be it based on the amount of time the transaction was opened or by virtue of the fact that the trade was opened inadvertently at an incorrect price, time, or instrument.”

Ken noticed that Section 8 seems to allow open trades to be closed and accounts to be terminated. There's nothing in what Kate posted that says that profits from closed trades can be seized by retroactively nullifying trades.

BForex's website includes the following...

MARKET CONDITIONS

During regular FX market conditions, due to our policy of no slippage, spot orders will be executed at the price you click/quote.

During volatile market conditions, spot orders will be executed at the price the trader quoted. Even during volatile market conditions, clients receive consistent ask (buy) and bid (sell) prices with fixed spreads.

bforex guarantees 100% fixed spreads under illiquid market conditions (these may happen just before important economic or political news events, or when market activity is low). During these conditions, banks often widen spreads due to lack of buyers and supply & demand.

This strikes us as an open invitation to try to trade the news. If a forex broker has issues with news trading, the company's website and TOS need to be clearly written so that traders know what the restrictions are.

Ken asked Kate to show where BForex's TOS permit this. Kate kept referring to Section 8. Since negotiations were stalled and BForex was providing nothing new, Ken gave Kate a deadline to show something in the Terms of Service that allowed BForex to act this way. Kate promised to take things to BForex's Board of Directors. She then sent this response from BForex to Ken...

We find your emails unnecessarily aggressive and choose not to remain in communication with you on this matter. We have had enough of your baseless accusations.

Again, to make it perfectly clear, if you choose to act as judge and jury and send out this defamatory email against us, or put the words bforex and scam together in your forum, we will absolutely be forced to take legal proceedings against you.

The FPA does not bow to legal threats. Ken made it very plain to Kate that BForex didn't have to communicate with the FPA, but did either owe Ibham1 money or show him why they didn't. Ibham1 sent his own request for information or payment and reports getting neither. The reason that the FPA now is putting BForex and Scam together is because BForex gave us no choice but to declare the company to be a scam.

There is another issue with BForex beyond improperly taking money from a trader. The company has a history of hiding information about the location of it's representatives and of being linked to fake reviews at the FPA.

The FPA has not been able to determine why many forex brokers in Israel hide that they have some or all of their offices there. We assume Israel would have a very good structure for regulation, but have never seen any broker admit to being based there. An earlier BForex rep who posted in the reviews claimed to be in Switzerland. Instead, that one was posting from the same Israeli location as another rep used to post inside the forums. The most recent rep, Kate, was careful to use proxy servers when posting in the FPA's forums and reviews.

Earlier in these discussions, Ken asked the FPA's AsstModerator to cross-check some of Kate's posts against the forums and reviews databases. This showed just how far BForex.com will go to protect its good name. There had been a proxy used to leave multiple fake 5 star reviews from April 2009 until August 2010. It was also used to create forums accounts that correlated with the names on the reviews. When Ken asked Kate to check and see who else had access to the proxy, she claimed to not understand. When he explained it, she didn't reply to the question. The fake reviews left from the same web proxy that Kate used are now on display on BForex's review page.

Based on all available information, we feel that BForex has scammed Ibham1 by improperly taking money owed to him. We also see more than sufficient evidence that BForex has tried to post fake reviews at the FPA. Under the circumstances, we see no other choice than to declare that BForex is a scam.


Ibham1's original complaint thread against Bforex.com

Official FPA Scam Finding against BForex

Review Page for BForex.com
 
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Bforex office in israel

Most Israeli Forex companies hide the fact that they have offices in israel, simply because they work on targeting middle-eastern clients.
 
broker

is there any broker at all we can trust when you have a demo by any broker the trade will be closed just when you hit the buttom but in real account either they write cant communicate or it take 15 seconds to close the damn trades so if anyone know a good broker plz tell me becurse i havent found one
Stuffi
 
Thank you FPA

I would like to thank Ken and the rest of the FPA Scam Investigations Committee in trying to resolve this matter. Your efforts have been greatly appreciated.
 
is there any broker at all we can trust when you have a demo by any broker the trade will be closed just when you hit the buttom but in real account either they write cant communicate or it take 15 seconds to close the damn trades so if anyone know a good broker plz tell me becurse i havent found one
Stuffi

Try GoMarketsAus mate. I've been with them for 18 months and never had any problems. If you're in the USA though they won't sign you up....Reasons unknown at this time.
 
Please explain Scalping

Can somebody give me an exact definition of scalping? Is it quantified Pipwise or trade duration wise?
Will a trade with 20 pips potential and an with an avg. 2 minute trade duration make scalping?
 
Try GoMarketsAus mate. I've been with them for 18 months and never had any problems. If you're in the USA though they won't sign you up....Reasons unknown at this time.
FYI. due to the new Dodd-Frank law and ensuing regs issued by the CFTC, Go Markets cannot take US folks as clients. They are closing my account as os 10/18. Too bad, they are a good broker, I hate to leave them. Don't you just love nanny (meddling) government?
 
Can somebody give me an exact definition of scalping? Is it quantified Pipwise or trade duration wise?
Will a trade with 20 pips potential and an with an avg. 2 minute trade duration make scalping?

Real scalping is trading on a very short time scale, trying to catch tiny little moves. Some people are good at it, some aren't. Trades may only last a few seconds.

Bucketshops don't like profitable scalpers since they can't or won't hedge themselves against the real market quickly - this makes a trader's loss the brokers gain and a trader's gain the broker's loss.

Any broker coming anywhere close to STP won't care about scalping. A bucketshop that is hoping to capitalize on trader losses will have it's own definition. Many define scalping as trades held for 60 seconds or less. Some define scalping as trades held for under 10 minutes.

I don't scalp, but if the market shifts against me when I'm on a shorter timeframe, I don't want to worry about some rule preventing me from getting out. I'd never even consider opening an account with a broker that required trades to last over 1 minute.
 
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