GUILTY Case# 2012-041 | ibham1 vs www.bmfn.com

[ibham1]

Original FPA Traders Court Submission:

I am submitting the case against: www.bmfn.com

My Case is: I opened an account with BMFN in August 2010. I successfully managed to withdraw $6,000 in November 2010 and a further $9,000 in May 2011. However, when I attempted to withdraw a further $6,000 in January 2012 I received an email stating my account has been “deactivated and closed due to system abuse.”

The email highlighted a section from their terms and conditions stating BMFN had the right to cancel all profits due to inaccurate pricing. I contacted them on many occasions demanding proof as I could not believe every single trade I placed over an 18 month period was affected by a BMFN system failure.

My account equity was $20,053 when my account was deactivated. Even though all my trades were placed at news time, their t&c’s do not mention anything about scalp\news trading restrictions.

I will upload two files. The spreadsheet contains all the trades I placed (on each tab). The word documents have all the emails they sent.

Thanks

Inderjit Bhambra

New thread in the Scam Alerts Folder:

• https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/forex-forum/scam-alerts-folder/19080-bmfn-boston-merchant-scam.html
  

Review is submitted by Inderjit on 03/02/12

The company was first contacted about the issue on 02/08/12 the last contact was on 03/10/12

Details: The only emails I have received have been from Compliance, even then they have not put their names on any of the emails.

Company representatives' emails: Compliance_Department <Compliance_Department@bmfn.com>

 

[Romeo]

It is wise of you to start a court case. This is a private folder and you and the broker can submit all evidence without being in public view.
Could you please submit your statement as received from the broker? It will help us understand your trading better.

Your case reminds me other cases we had in the past, where the broker gave the same excuse to cancel traders profits. It was a discussion issue many times and I hope that this broker is fair enough to show up and submit evidence, that will make us understand what they mean with it. In our point of view as traders, we can really non understand this. It is their platform and their feed. We only trade what we have in front of us.

 

[ibham1]

Hi, thanks for the reply. These brokers know they are in the wrong and are also aware they don't have a leg to stand on. They also try to scare you so that the trader will not take the issue any further. In this case, BMFN stated that if I took legal action, they will make a counter claim and demand all the money that I had already withdrawn be returned back to them. Surely, if all my trades were illegal, they would want all their money back including the withdrawn funds.

I have never received a statement from BMFN via email. The excel spreadsheet (provided) show the report generated from within the platform (see tabs labelled P1 to P4). Then the last tab is an export from the platform into excel showing all my trades. Hope this helps.

 

[Romeo]

You only had 65 trades in total since 10/08/2010?

As I see, most of the trades were held for a few minutes or even a few hours before closing. Can you calculate the average time of holding your trades open?

 

[ibham1]

I placed a total of 64 trades. These 64 trades were held open for a total of 74 hours and 33 minutes, so an average hold time (difference between opening and closing a trade) well above 1 hour per trade.

All trades were closed on the same day (except for two). These two were held open for more than 24 hours (row 29 and 30 on the final tab of the spreadsheet). When both these trades are taken out of the calculation (in order to make sure the figures aren't scewed), the average hold time is now 41 minutes and 17 seconds per trade.

 

[Romeo]

Well, if their server has a 41 minutes and 17 seconds delay, then they should stop being a Forex broker and do something else for a living.
I heard of arbitrage EAs that close the trades within 2 seconds. And their trading frequency is very high of course. Nothing to compare with your trading style. Of course this is the FPA trader's court and we need to call the broker to hear their part of the story. We can not make any conclusions before we hear and see their evidence about your case.

Have you reported this to the regulators shown on their website? Their opinion is very important, since they have a direct influence on the broker.

 

[ibham1]

I will contact the FSA to get the ball rolling on their end aswell.

 

[Pharaoh]

Contact any regulator that's even remotely linked to them.

 

[ibham1]

I have contacted the FSA, they have told me to make aformal complaint to BMFN (which I have now done). BMFN have 8 weeks in which to make a final decision. I can then contact the Financial Ombudsman Service to look into the matter.

Will FPA be contacting BMFN in order to provide their side of the story?

 

[Romeo]

Yes. Our Moderator will send them an email, informing them about your case.