FlipSideFX - GNTFX PowerTrader - Brian Thomson

[TraderOwl]

Someone has a lot of explaining to do.

Why no word yet from them here?

I'm glad you agree there is a need for an explanation, I wasn't sure whether I should be using this episode, as just a learning experience.

I have just forwarded them an email invite to this thread, so maybe we won't have to wait too long now!

 

[TraderOwl]

Interestingly, I received an email from Brian Thomson on 30th December asking me why I had started this thread.

I responded with a summary of the issues with FlipSideFX and GNTFX and suggested he read through all of the material I have provided in this thread.

I have not heard anything since.

I have also not received any response from GNTFX, which I take as an indication that Brian Thomson is both FlipSideFX and GNTFX.

 

[snapped2002]

I would not let up.
get the answers you deserve.

I am still foggy on "invisible" trades.

That just makes no sense to me at all.
I can understand them placing trades for you as that seems to be the service offered but for you to not be able to see EVERYTHING going on with YOUR money is just wrong.

I would like to see their side of this story and see what they say.

 

[TraderOwl]

I would not let up.
get the answers you deserve.

I am still foggy on "invisible" trades.

That just makes no sense to me at all.
I can understand them placing trades for you as that seems to be the service offered but for you to not be able to see EVERYTHING going on with YOUR money is just wrong.

I would like to see their side of this story and see what they say.

Agreed.
I believe the invisible trades 'existed' purely in Brian's mind so as to prevent the need to permit a 'withdrawal' from the account.
The placing of trades, as per the FlipSideFX system was what I signed up for, these trades are derived from the 5min chart and typically have a stop loss of approximately 20pips.
The issue I have is there were some alien trades, not FlipSideFX, which were placed against my account, which had a stop loss of 700pips and were executed with a lot size bigger (4.96 and 4.63) than the FlipSideFX trades seen on my account (largest was 3.62).

My suspicion is GNTFX is not a real brokerage, but just a website pretending to be a brokerage which feeds Brian Thomson's (or whatever his real name is, possibly Casper Mikkelsen) bank account. This is obviously difficult to prove as the brokerage is setup in Belize and is using an offshore company where the owner's identity is hidden.


Hopefully we'll see a response from both GNTFX and FlipSideFX/Brian Thomson at some point. In the meantime, I'd hope no one else chooses to deposit monies into a GNTFX account.

 

[folau]

I am trading with FxTurtleTrader and so far have managed to get my original investment back, leaving a healthy "profit". Reading this is very concerning - are there any updates?

 

[TraderOwl]

I am trading with FxTurtleTrader and so far have managed to get my original investment back, leaving a healthy "profit". Reading this is very concerning - are there any updates?

Hi Folau,
I'm pleased to hear someone has managed to at least get their initial investment back. I'll also be very interested to know whether you manage to continue to withdraw profits as the months progress.

I'm still awaiting Brian's and GNTFX's responses to my experiences, I can't believe they haven't bothered to respond to the facts I've presented here.

 

[MohammedA1]

no updates so far ?

 

[chris146]

Here is my abbreviated summary of my experience with Brian Thomson, FlipSideFX and GNTFX PowerTrader, included are some thoughts about these people and others who must be associated in one way or another:

My introduction to Brian Thomson was when I became aware of a manual trading system being marketed as GreenWaveFX.com, I was seduced by it’s apparent simple rule set and it’s stated trading history, this was August 2013.


The main element of this strategy which appealed to me was it’s typical risk:reward of a minimum of 1:2 and typically not risking more than ~25pips.


As an aside: I have since identified that GreenWaveFX.com's trading strategy was previously known as The Envelope Profit System and prior to that The Bollinger Profit System.


Having attempted to trade this system manually on demo for a period of time, I was unable to produce the same results as were published on a weekly basis by the GreenWaveFX.com team. I put this down to not being at my screen when the correct setups presented themselves.


I was therefore pleased when Brian Thomson launched the ‘automated’ version, marketed as GreenFlowFX.com, as it seemed to offer the opportunity to receive the trades which were being published within the marketing material. I was disappointed to find that instead of this ‘automated’ version being an Expert Advisor, it was in fact a Trade Copier using a MySQL server with expert advisor SignalSlaveMySQL+.ex4


Unfortunately, the trades I received via this Trade Copier were nothing like those published within the marketing emails, see comparison document: 20140506 - GreenWaveFX Comparison.


Brian Thomson advised me that they were experiencing difficulties with the trade copier and he would be in touch once they’d resolved things.


The next communication was another re-branding, namely FlipSideFX.com (File: FlipSideFX.com marketing email refers) and that he was going to provide very few places to traders who wanted to receive an Expert Advisor which would deliver the trades advertised. I was still interested as the alleged performance of this system, still looked promising. So I chose to take up this option, at a cost of $5,000 only to once again be disappointed to find that it still wasn’t a true Expert Advisor and that the ‘solution’ was just another implementation of the Trade Copier using a MySQL server.


Once again, the trades received via the copier were nothing like the published trades.


At this point, Brian stated he was in the process of establishing a much better solution via a broker and would be in touch when it was ready. This introduced GNTFX.com and their PowerTrader solution.


Brian Thomson then offered to send a credit of $5,000 to my GNTFX account, as a ‘refund’ for the sum already paid for the FlipSideFX.com ‘EA’, this meant I had to open and fund an account with GNTFX.com, so I opened an account with $2,500 and Brian was good to his word and sent a credit of $5,000 to the account. I had some slight reservations regarding the GNTFX.com brokerage, as their website looked very much cobbled together and not totally legit, but this was the only way I could see of getting my money back.


During the GNTFX account opening process, you are asked what risk setting you want, I asked Brian to explain which setting I should choose to enable me to see only the trades which he took using the FlipSideFx.com 5 minute based system which he used for his marketing material. he stated Level 4 was the appropriate setting.


The GNTFX PowerTrader account view mechanism shows trades which have closed and this page is only updated after midnight/1am in the morning, so it is impossible to see live/open trades.


From that point, I was able to see trades hitting my account and on a weekly basis I was able to verify those trades against the trades published by Brian within his weekly marketing emails and they were on the whole very close, so I was beginning to be happy with the service being offered, so much so, I chose to deposit a further sum of $2,500 into the account.


Unfortunately, just after doing so I received an email dated 3rd August 2015 (file: 20150803 - Marketing email from FlipSideFX)and following it’s link to the screencast of Brian’s alleged MT4 Account history I noticed a particular line which showed EURUSD against a trade which was for the GBPUSD, this set some alarm bells going, as maybe I had finally detected this offering to be nothing more than a photoshop scam. See attached file: 20150804 - Screenshot of screencast 9nxf657qj3l (I chose to keep this piece of evidence to myself, as I thought that if I was to see my account double and was successfully able to withdraw my initial capital, it would prove me wrong and maybe it was some other presentational error).


So, by 6th November 2015, my GNTFX account was looking very healthy with a balance of $25,876.26 and having just received an email from Brian saying he had stopped trading for the week, due to the upcoming NFP figures, see attached file: 20151106 - Email from FlipSideFX re All Flat.

I assumed my account was flat and therefore chose to request a withdrawal of $15,000. To my surprise I received an email from GNTFX telling me that not only was my account not flat, but there was insufficient margin available to permit a withdrawal, see attached file: 20151106 - Email from GNTFX re Withdrawal request.


I requested information from Brian Thomson and received the attached email: 20151107 - Email from Brian confirming open positions, this email also stated he had taken trades on the 1hr and 4hr timeframes, due to my risk setting, which is not what I had asked for, as per my email: 20151108 - Email to Brian re open swing trades. I also had reason to email Brian on 18th December 2015 and reiterated my desire to only see the standard trades, as per file: 20151218 - Email to Brian.


Strangely, the trade(s) which was consuming the margin on my account were never seen on my GNTFX account summary, so I believe it was never there, just an excuse not to release any monies.


By 6th February 2016, my GNTFX account had grown further, to $42,991.63 so I chose to make another withdrawal request, this time for $15,000


Once again, I was informed there were open positions, which were invisible to me and therefore I wasn’t able to make the withdrawal. By now, this was becoming frustrating, but I didn’t know where to turn to, as tracking down ‘Brian Thomson’ was almost impossible. File: 20160213 - Email from GNTFX re Withdrawal request refers.


My account continued to allegedly grow to $73,459.98, so on 13 April 2016, I made a further request to withdraw $15,000, once again I was told the withdrawal couldn’t be made due to open trades. I continued to attempt to make contact with Brian Thomson, in an attempt to discuss the open trades but he seemed to disappear. File: 20160619 - Email chain from 20160413 refers.

As you’ll see from that file, I was aware of the risk and the opportunities which were available to close those positions for a profit prior to the ‘Brexit’ vote, but Brian chose to ignore these, hence why once the ‘brexit’ result was known and the subsequent collapse of the GBPUSD, whereby those long held spurious/alien trades were apparently stopped out or margin called and the balance within my account stood at $311.02


I was in shock, purely because I was now able to see these trades and review them and I could not believe the offending GBPUSD trades could’ve been closed for a reasonable profit at any point between:

26 April 2016 and 04 May 2016

18 May 2016 and 20 May 2016

24 May 2016 and 31 May 2016

07 June 2016 and 08 June 2016

19 June 2016 and 23 June 2016

If ‘Brian Thomson’ was a professional risk manager, he would’ve taken advantage of those moments in the market and would’ve either taken profit or at least reduced the level of risk (700pips) to something more in keeping with his base trading style.



Following this disastrous result, I approached Brian Thomson for an explanation, I was very surprised at his response, see attached file: 20160627 - Email from Brian re brexit polls.



Although I am frustrated at myself by being taken in by all of his offerings and continuing to throw money at his various ‘solutions’, my main concern now is to try and prevent anyone else falling for this scam.


I have identified a number of webpages who offer GNTFX PowerTrader facilities, I list them below. These are all touting the same trade results and therefore I conclude that Brian Thomson, any other name by which he presents himself and GNTFX are all in this together and possibly one and the same person. I also know a person by the name of Casper Mikkelsen is linked to at least some of this debacle.




The various webpages which offer the same GNTFX PowerTrader solutions are:

FlipSideFX.com

FXTurtleTrader.com

autofxprofit.com - please note this site show the same video, although updated to 7th April 2016 and includes the’EURUSD mistake’ of 22nd July 2015.

evolutionfxfx.com

bollingerfxsystem.com

fx30i.com

gaincashnow.com & onlinelucrative.com currently forward to bollingerfxsystem.com




So all of the above domain names, are likely to be scams too. I suggest this, purely because there is no need to have various entities all offering the same solution, unless you’re trying to avoid being traced.


I attach the following files for reference regarding the other domain names:

20161227 - FXTurtleTrader.com - ROI

Evolutionfxfx webpage excerpt



I have chosen not to upload the video files from the various webpages as they are between 30MB and 55MB each, although I can obviously provide them if required.

Hello TraderOwl,
Sorry to only be commenting 1 year after your posting, but I'm just trying to follow along.
I note all these domains you mention above and I just want to clarify your position on
fxturtletrader.com
Are you suggesting to me that FXTURTLETRADER.COM is part of the scam?
The reason I am asking is because if you visit www.fxturtletrader.com today the website sort of acts like it's going after GNTFX ???
In which case this has an interesting twist, wouldn't you agree?

 

[TraderOwl]

Hello TraderOwl,
Sorry to only be commenting 1 year after your posting, but I'm just trying to follow along.
I note all these domains you mention above and I just want to clarify your position on
fxturtletrader.com
Are you suggesting to me that FXTURTLETRADER.COM is part of the scam?
The reason I am asking is because if you visit www.fxturtletrader.com today the website sort of acts like it's going after GNTFX ???
In which case this has an interesting twist, wouldn't you agree?

Hi Chris,

I agree, this is an interesting twist. My original comments about FXTurtleTrader.com and including them in this thread was accurate at the time of writing.

Maybe FXTurtleTrader.com was some kind of 3rd party affiliate/franchise and as the scam unfolded the 3rd party has not only been burnt but any acquired investors have also been burnt too. I think it would be helpful if they actually stated this on their website if this is what has happened.

I have sent an email to the StopCasperMikklesen@gmail.com email address, so I may learn more in due course.

If I learn anything, I'll update this thread accordingly.

 

[TraderOwl]

Well, it finally looks like this scam artist is going to have to answer for his actions!

CFTC goes after operator of fraudulent Forex scheme GNTFX - FinanceFeeds

Since at least 2015, Casper Mikkelsen engaged in a fraudulent scheme to solicit money from at least 101 individuals and entities who invested their funds with GNTFX.

financefeeds.com