Three points to commence:
1 Most important, I wish you and all of you who give of your valuable knowledge and time to the FPA a very happy and fruitful 2014.
2 I would like to apologise for taking such a long time to respond, for genuine reasons but I won’t waste your time explaining.
3 Sorry about all repeats I sent last time – I do struggle with technology.
Now, down to business:
One of the problems is that I am not sure how much detail to give you; knowing that you would prefer useful brevity, I have collated the detail I believe would be useful into a table below:
(please note that if some things don’t make sense to you, I did not and still do not understand many of the phrases, lingo, etc.)
As I, along with 7 others, could not invest much, FMG proposed to give us a share of the rebate they received on each trade. Profit was not the objective, just the number of trades.
When we had built up capital of $100,000, then we could proceed to proper (my word) trading. When FMG approached me in the Spring of 2010, they were confident that I would reach this goal by Christmas 2010. It was simply a case of getting as many trades in as possible. There were failsafes in place and very little risk.
They were looking to build up a fund large enough to be able to use their bot, which they had developed for a trading bank. They felt that if they could do this for a client, they could do it for themselves. ++See June 2011 below
FMG were based in Panama City but also spoke of going up to Florida frequently.
Herewith in Chronological Order (but bit of overlap) the history:
Trading was always US$/Euro
1 March 2010
FMG Global FX
Cold call, to which I expressed interest, having lost a chunk of pension
Then several calls to introduce me to Metatrader, the idea was to run a practice a/c with me until I was comfortable. In fact, I never did do any trading but FMG traded using the following institutions:
15 March 2010
FMG with STP, London I invested £3500
Opened a M/T4 Account. I was part of a MAM group account
14 April 2010 I invested £10,000
15 April 2010 I INVESTED £6000 My total investment with STP £19,500
During this time, John Bulabo was bombarding me for more money as it would make trading safer (one of the reasons I remember) the more money in the account. In the end I cashed in a bond for £16,000 and deposited it with STP. He sounded so plausible. I was not responding out of greed - I simply wanted to make up for losing a chunk of my pension.
John Bulabo explained he would run a REBATE Program with Maxbank for whom FMG had designed the program originally.
He would start with a manual account to build up the capital, in order to be able to move to bot trading.
26 April 2010 FMG advised they were looking at 2 new institutions through whom to trade as STP's spread was too wide.
29 April 2010 FMG instructed me to close STP account and I withdrew balance of £2812
2 Sept 2010 FMG tried again with STP See below
25 May 2010
FMG with Alpari I invested £2812
John Bulabo said Alpari did not react fast enough to instructions
8 July 2010 Last day trading on my account - credit wiped out
Dec 2010 I was going away for three months: FMG said they would work at retrieving some credit for me
August 2011 Balance of £52 withdrawn by me from Alpari
At FMG's prompting, I emailed Alpari to express displeasure at my credit being wiped out. Alpari had a
look and concluded they had done nothing wrong
10 June 2010
FMG with CFH Markets No record of any deposit by me
CFH were only licensed to pass trades through - FMG commenced a rebate program for those clients who needed to build capital.
2 Sept 2010
FMG with STP (again) I deposited £3350 with STP
Trading through FMG's own OMEGA FUND. Reference made to launching "the PAM" ??
Again, I was part of a MAM account and was to receive $5/trade up to a credit of $25,000.
16 Nov 2010 I emailed FMG as I had not anything for 2 months. I was then away for three months and incommunicado
29 March 2010 Soon after my return John Bulabo phoned to say they were finishing with STP - same problems as previously.
FMG were too small for them; STP were not booking the trades.
29 March 2011
FMG with United World Capital, Cyprus. Subsequently renamed Mayzys Investment Co, Limassol
27 April 2011 l deposited £3700, My bank statement showed "PMT to Czech Rep"
9 May 0 8 June 2011 Traded during one month but this also went pearshaped and all my credit wiped out.
30 June 2011 I raised this with John Bulabo who emailed back "I know. sorry my focus has been on the bot which I have
to say is finally going live so give me a week or 2 and I or the boys will get you in the loop I will have time
to hit the manual trading in 30 days or so but congest (?) on the bot I will talk to you soon.
Every time the trading went pearshaped and FMG moved on to each new organisation, John Bulabo would ask for more investment as this time was always going to make the grade. He spoke like a machinegun firing and it was difficult to take on board what he was saying. When I told him I was cleaned out and couldn’t invest any further, he turned very nasty and said he would change the phone numbers and the e-mail addresses and finish business with me. I felt the only possible way out for me was to stay on good terms and hope that their product would come good.
There was always talk about “tweaking algorithms”. After losing the large amount of c£19000 with STP, I was trapped and found myself in a “Nick Leeson syndrome” and felt I had to go with the flow and send more money in order to at least get my investments back. Their big objective was always to attain capital for me of $100.000 by FMG giving me (and 7 others) a share of their rebate, which varied between $5, $10 and $15 per trade.
I cannot accuse them of not trying – it was just that they were using other people’s money .....
Always jam tomorrow. However, I have heard of the method John Bulabo used to pressurise me into sending more and more money is recognised as a “Boiler Room Scam”.
29 March 2011
John Bulabo spoke to me on my return home and explained that from a corporate standpoint FMG was insolvent.
Raz Axelrod had taken up a 50/50 ownership. Currently trading manually to build up funds with a view to using ‘bot’ soon.
John was trading a hedge fund in Marbella, Spain. After this I only ever dealt with Raz Axelrod or Ciaran Morgan. There were still 9 folk in the office in Panama.
30 June 2011
Raz Axelrod phoned me from Cyprus to which I replied by email:
“Thanks so much for your phone call from Cyprus – really exciting news. Hope the launch of the ‘bot started well.” Can’t remember what the news was but clearly a new initiative. Raz was sounding like John Bulabo, ie talking up everything, which had not been his style but, of course, he now had a vested interest.
++I remarked to him that it was now clear to me that FMG had been using me as a guinea pig to which he agreed.
He also spoke of coming to London and he would phone me so that we could meet up, but I never heard.
At some point around this time, I have made a note that Ciaran Morgan telephoned to say that they would be putting $10,000 in place for me with UWG to trade using their bot for which I would receive $5/trade.
Sept 2011
The last time I spoke was with Raz Axelrod. He and Ciaran Morgan were working out of Barcelona. They were no longer going to do retail trading but had got some banks interested in their new set up. By now, Raz Axelrod was running the show (see para above) and he said that he and Ciaran had decided that I should receive from them $1 a trade from their new setup, up to a total of $100,000.
At last I felt I could see some light at the end of the tunnel: I quote from my email to Raz following our phone conversation:
Dated 3 Sept 2011 My email to Raz Axelrod
“when you have an opportunity, it would be good if I could repay the £3000 that I borrowed back in April, as I had said that I would be able to repay it before now. Would it be possible for you to set up the TT receipt for payments for me please? Obviously, if I were able to start receiving the regular payments you told me about ie $1 for every transaction up to $100,000, that would be more than
acceptable. I still need to somehow get £8000 back into my account that Cliff (my husband) doesn’t know about .... and it would be good to be able to repay Cliff the £16,000 eventually.”
Dated 5 Sept 2011 Raz Axelrod to me
“Hey A-----
It is very good hearing from you, how have you been? We will proceed as discussed and will provide you with the details towards the latter end of the week. As you know, you are more than just a client but a friend. If you are going to Spain (we were going for a week but to the South) check on flight connections through Barcelona, we would love to meet over a cup of tea. We hope that everything is well and are always happy to hear from you, so please do not hesitate to call any time.
Other than that, hope you have a wonderful week and looking forward to speaking with you.
Best Regards
Raz
.+34 633850556
At first I did not try to ring as I knew they were all over Europe trying to drum up business. Also I knew they would have to get their new program working before I would start receiving $1/trade. When I did so, as there had not been any follow up to the promises made above, I could not get through, either to Barcelona or Panama.
August 2012
I telephoned UWC and here is the e-mail they sent:
Thank you for the time that you have spent with me on the phone.
Again my name is Pencho Murdjev and I am your personal account manager at UWC.
As promised from me I will provide you with the requested from you information regarding your trading account and the trades being opened for you. In order for me to be able to help you on this matter, please include the period of time that you would like to see for which the trades were opened for you.
Also I have found an information for you with the contact details with the people who were helping you:
-
http://www.pmgroupsa.com/
If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us via my email or our multilingual Live Chat. If you prefer you can also contact me in Skype, where my Skype name is: murdjev4520
I really hope to be hearing from you soon!!!
Best regards,
Pencho Murdjev
Account Manager
United World Capital Ltd
Client Relations Department
Phone: +357 25 750-555, Ext. 111
Fax: +357 25 722-377
pencho.murdjev@uwcfx.com
www.uwcfx.com ,
www.mayzus.com
FMG who were now trading as Preferred Management Group. However, the phones on the new website were not being answered.
Since then I happened upon the FPA and eventually plucked up the courage to make contact in the hope that someone in the Army could give me a contact lead.
Somehow, I still feel that Raz Axelrod (who took over from John Bulabo) was genuine but was overtaken by events.
If you could advise me how to go about approaching the various organisations with whom FMG/Preffered Management Group dealt, I could try once again to find contact details If you have any better ideas, I should be happy to go along with anything you decide.