Gian Piero
Private, 1st Class
- Messages
- 38
Original FPA Traders Court Submission:
I am submitting the case against: www.noafx.com
My Case is: I am a professional trader trading US equity and oil futures and options since 1989. In July 2015 I opened a trading account at NoaFX to complement my long time derivatives activity.
On researching the broker NoaFX, reference to a funds segregation scheme administered by a New Zealand law firm made in Customer Agreement, along New Zealand’s solid legal framework and good business reputation, settled any doubt I may have had about the broker and made me feel safe carrying out investments through it.
Over the following months I transferred quite a significant amount of money to Stewart & Associates Lawyers Limited trust account held at Bank of New Zealand as per NoaFX’s funding instructions. By the end of November 2015 I was holding EUR 375,000 funds in my trading account.
Despite the aforesaid reassurances, earlier on in December 2015 I started to grow very concerned about my funds safety and, more broadly, about the reputability of the brokerage. There were too many loose ends in NoaFX’s story about a proper (and working) segregation scheme in place and false claims about safety of clients deposits kept adding up. Extremely at unease with such a situation, I eventually requested to have all my funds wired out and sent back to my USA broker accounts.
At first, NoaFX support claimed they were experiencing some sort of unspecified liquidity clog and were able to wire back only EUR 100,000 funds. This sounded extremely alarming. A 375,000 wire was supposed to be a no-brainer for a brokerage professing to hold multiple hundred million in AUM.
Later on in December 2015, NoaFX stopped to process any further withdrawal and kept on blaming the bank for delays in issuing wires, while feeding me with any kind of excuse. Mr Karthik Subramanian, NoaFX Head of Operations, even dared to email me wire slips and SWIFT messages for my outgoing transfers to show me they were taking good care of my requests (you can find more about Mr Subramanian’s previous scam successes here fxethosisscam.wordpress.com and here jon-greed.blogspot.com). Those bank documents had all been blatantly fabricated in order to deceive me. More than 3 full months have now passed and I am still waiting for my other EUR 275,000 funds to be returned.
Funds segregation, too, eventually turned out to be a hoax and a fraudulent misrepresentation of facts. No segregation scheme for clients funds has ever existed at NoaFX.
NoaFX stopped any communication with me as of 16 January 2016.
My lawyers have tried multiple times to contact the broker but always unsuccessfully. Letter Before Action was sent to them but got no reply whatsoever.
Reports to all the relevant authorities have already been filed: New Zealand FMA, New Zealand Serious Fraud Office, New Zealand Financial Intelligence Unit, New Zealand Insolvency Office, New Zealand Law Society, Bank of New Zealand, Singaporean Police, Singaporean Monetary Authority, Singaporean OCBC Bank, Malaysian CIMB Bank Berhad, Chennai Police and USA Department of the Treasury FinCEN.
Investigations are underway.
NoaFX (www.noafx.com) is not a company in itself but just a FX brokering brand and is part of Capital Market Investments Limited (www.cmigroup.co.nz), a New Zealand company allegedly with “strong footholds in New Zealand” although their webpage appears to be inconsequential. NoaFX claims to provide funds segregation scheme and segregated trust deposits for clients funds held in top prime banks acting as deposit custodians (www.noafx.com/why-noafx.php).
The same people who run NoaFX also run FxEthos (www.fxethos.com), a company in liquidation who appears as well to be on the FCA's alerts list since long. Both NoaFX and FxEthos clients funds are ultimately paid out to the same Capital Market Investments Limited (aka CMI Group).
CMI Group company structure is quite multilayered as you would imagine for a typical international scam, whose ownership and officers crisscross continuously. CMI Group holds various same-name child companies in several jurisdictions (New Zealand, Singapore, India, Cyprus and possibly Malaysia) and is ultimately controlled by three people only: Abdul Rasheed, Seeni Jahangir Ghany and Karthik Subramanian. The company claims to do business in other financial niches (namely Private Equity & Investment funds, Immigration Advisory services, Debit Card solutions, Hotel & Real Estate management and Financial Concierge services) to appear plausible but actually they move around like grasshoppers defrauding unaware FX clients while exploiting the law system weakness. All NoaFX back-office forex activities are run out of Chennai, India, under Mr Subramanian’s supervision.
According to the warning the FMA has issued about Capital Market Investments Limited (fma.govt.nz/news/warnings-and-alerts/a-z-list-of-all-fma-warnings/#C) and regardless of what is still claimed on NoaFX website:
- NoaFX is not FMA regulated and doesn't operate under the strict licensing and regulation requirements of New Zealand
- NoaFX doesn’t hold any FSP license (www.business.govt.nz/fsp/app/ui/fsp/version/searchSummaryCompanyFSP/FSP284605/26.do)
- NoaFX is not a member of the NZ Financial Dispute Resolution scheme
- NoaFX doesn’t hold clients funds in a trust account administered by a law firm
- NoaFX doesn’t provide any segregation scheme for clients funds
- Despite those “strong footholds in New Zealand”, Capital Market Investments Limited is about to be removed from the New Zealand Register of Companies (www.business.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/3693175) and the only NZ-resident director – Alex Bob Cijffers, former bankrupt – has just resigned his office.
Due to the delicate nature of the matter – investigations and court proceedings are still underway – I am unable to publicly upload any relevant doc apart from my account statement screenshot showing my balance. All the supporting evidence (I hold piles of it, including miles-long chat logs with NoaFX representatives and strikingly unchallengeable bank documentation) can be passed along to FPA team in their entirety for proper verification at anytime.
New thread in the Scam Alerts Folder:
Review is submitted by Gian Piero on 03/07/16
The company was first contacted about the issue on 12/02/15 the last contact was on 01/15/16
Details: Starting from mid December 2015 the company has really never provided any feedback but just kept on feeding me with excuses and void replies. Eventually Karthik Subramanian - my main contact over there - stopped communicating both on Skype and Whatsapp.
To date the very last attempt to formally contact NoaFX had been made on 21 January 2016 by my lawyers before the authorities started their investigations. Not surprisingly, such an attempt resulted in a complete waste of time:
Dear Edward Norton,
Greetings from NoaFX!
Thank you for writing to us.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
We have forwarded your request to the concern team.
They will check and process the as soon as possible. Once your request is processed we will get back to you.
Please feel free to contact us for any assistance.
Have a good day!
Regards,
Justin Troop
NoaFX Customer Support
Email: support@noafx.com | web: www.noafx.com
For all inquiries please contact our Client Services:
http://www.cmigroup.co.nz/contact.php
Telephone (24 Hours) : +64 9914 3120
Capital Market Investments Limited (HQ)
Level 1, 4 Bond Street,
Wellington 6011, New Zealand
New Zealand
Telephone : +64-9914-3120 | Fax: +64-9355-0385
On Thu, 21 Jan at 5:02 PM , Edward Norton <XXXXX> wrote:
Dear Sirs,
The account was held under the company name XXXXX for whom our client is the owner and director. The account number was XXXXX. Our client was dealing with Karthik Subramanian, who is now ignoring all attempts from our client to contact him.
We need an immediate resolution, failing which we will be aggressively proceeding with both court action, the police will be informed along with the Financial Markets Authority. Can you confirm funds will be refunded with no further delay.
Kind Regards
Edward
From: NoaFX [mailto:support@noafx.com]
Sent: Thursday 21 January 2016 07:32
To: info@noafx.com
Cc: XXXXX
Subject: Re: Reply
Dear Edward Norton,
Greetings from Noafx,
We apologize for the inconvenience caused.
It would be great if you provide us the MT4 id from which withdrawal request raised for €275.000 .
So that we can forward the withdrawal request to the accounts team and proceed further.
Please feel free to contact us for any assistance.
Regards,
Laura Brown
NoaFX Customer Support
Email: support@noafx.com | web: www.noafx.com
For all inquiries please contact our Client Services:
http://www.cmigroup.co.nz/contact.php
Telephone (24 Hours) : +64 9914 3120
Capital Market Investments Limited (HQ)
Level 1, 4 Bond Street,
Wellington 6011, New Zealand
New Zealand
Telephone : +64-9914-3120 | Fax: +64-9355-0385
On Thu, 21 Jan at 11:03 AM , Edward Norton <XXXXX> wrote:
Dear Admin,
Name: Edward Norton
Email ID: XXXXX
Comments: Dear Sirs We have been instructed by Mr Gian Piero XXXXX to assist with the withdrawal of €275.000 still held by your company contrary to our client's instructions. Our client has requested on several occasions an immediate refund of all funds held in his account, without success. We understand that your firm operates a segregated account system overseen by an external trustee, and we have also contacted today the trustee to seek clarification as to the status of our client's funds. We trust that you will be able to assist and action our client's request immediately without the need of judicial intervention but, for the avoidance of doubt, please note that we have been instructed to issue proceedings against your company and its sole shareholder both in New Zealand and in Singapore. We will refer to this correspondence when the issue of costs will arise. We await hearing from you with the utmost urgency. Yours sincerely Edward Norton for XXXXX
Company representatives' emails: Karthik Subramanian <karthik.ns@cmigroup.co.nz>
Seeni Jahangir Ghany <seeni.jg@noafx.com>
I am submitting the case against: www.noafx.com
My Case is: I am a professional trader trading US equity and oil futures and options since 1989. In July 2015 I opened a trading account at NoaFX to complement my long time derivatives activity.
On researching the broker NoaFX, reference to a funds segregation scheme administered by a New Zealand law firm made in Customer Agreement, along New Zealand’s solid legal framework and good business reputation, settled any doubt I may have had about the broker and made me feel safe carrying out investments through it.
Over the following months I transferred quite a significant amount of money to Stewart & Associates Lawyers Limited trust account held at Bank of New Zealand as per NoaFX’s funding instructions. By the end of November 2015 I was holding EUR 375,000 funds in my trading account.
Despite the aforesaid reassurances, earlier on in December 2015 I started to grow very concerned about my funds safety and, more broadly, about the reputability of the brokerage. There were too many loose ends in NoaFX’s story about a proper (and working) segregation scheme in place and false claims about safety of clients deposits kept adding up. Extremely at unease with such a situation, I eventually requested to have all my funds wired out and sent back to my USA broker accounts.
At first, NoaFX support claimed they were experiencing some sort of unspecified liquidity clog and were able to wire back only EUR 100,000 funds. This sounded extremely alarming. A 375,000 wire was supposed to be a no-brainer for a brokerage professing to hold multiple hundred million in AUM.
Later on in December 2015, NoaFX stopped to process any further withdrawal and kept on blaming the bank for delays in issuing wires, while feeding me with any kind of excuse. Mr Karthik Subramanian, NoaFX Head of Operations, even dared to email me wire slips and SWIFT messages for my outgoing transfers to show me they were taking good care of my requests (you can find more about Mr Subramanian’s previous scam successes here fxethosisscam.wordpress.com and here jon-greed.blogspot.com). Those bank documents had all been blatantly fabricated in order to deceive me. More than 3 full months have now passed and I am still waiting for my other EUR 275,000 funds to be returned.
Funds segregation, too, eventually turned out to be a hoax and a fraudulent misrepresentation of facts. No segregation scheme for clients funds has ever existed at NoaFX.
NoaFX stopped any communication with me as of 16 January 2016.
My lawyers have tried multiple times to contact the broker but always unsuccessfully. Letter Before Action was sent to them but got no reply whatsoever.
Reports to all the relevant authorities have already been filed: New Zealand FMA, New Zealand Serious Fraud Office, New Zealand Financial Intelligence Unit, New Zealand Insolvency Office, New Zealand Law Society, Bank of New Zealand, Singaporean Police, Singaporean Monetary Authority, Singaporean OCBC Bank, Malaysian CIMB Bank Berhad, Chennai Police and USA Department of the Treasury FinCEN.
Investigations are underway.
NoaFX (www.noafx.com) is not a company in itself but just a FX brokering brand and is part of Capital Market Investments Limited (www.cmigroup.co.nz), a New Zealand company allegedly with “strong footholds in New Zealand” although their webpage appears to be inconsequential. NoaFX claims to provide funds segregation scheme and segregated trust deposits for clients funds held in top prime banks acting as deposit custodians (www.noafx.com/why-noafx.php).
The same people who run NoaFX also run FxEthos (www.fxethos.com), a company in liquidation who appears as well to be on the FCA's alerts list since long. Both NoaFX and FxEthos clients funds are ultimately paid out to the same Capital Market Investments Limited (aka CMI Group).
CMI Group company structure is quite multilayered as you would imagine for a typical international scam, whose ownership and officers crisscross continuously. CMI Group holds various same-name child companies in several jurisdictions (New Zealand, Singapore, India, Cyprus and possibly Malaysia) and is ultimately controlled by three people only: Abdul Rasheed, Seeni Jahangir Ghany and Karthik Subramanian. The company claims to do business in other financial niches (namely Private Equity & Investment funds, Immigration Advisory services, Debit Card solutions, Hotel & Real Estate management and Financial Concierge services) to appear plausible but actually they move around like grasshoppers defrauding unaware FX clients while exploiting the law system weakness. All NoaFX back-office forex activities are run out of Chennai, India, under Mr Subramanian’s supervision.
According to the warning the FMA has issued about Capital Market Investments Limited (fma.govt.nz/news/warnings-and-alerts/a-z-list-of-all-fma-warnings/#C) and regardless of what is still claimed on NoaFX website:
- NoaFX is not FMA regulated and doesn't operate under the strict licensing and regulation requirements of New Zealand
- NoaFX doesn’t hold any FSP license (www.business.govt.nz/fsp/app/ui/fsp/version/searchSummaryCompanyFSP/FSP284605/26.do)
- NoaFX is not a member of the NZ Financial Dispute Resolution scheme
- NoaFX doesn’t hold clients funds in a trust account administered by a law firm
- NoaFX doesn’t provide any segregation scheme for clients funds
- Despite those “strong footholds in New Zealand”, Capital Market Investments Limited is about to be removed from the New Zealand Register of Companies (www.business.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/3693175) and the only NZ-resident director – Alex Bob Cijffers, former bankrupt – has just resigned his office.
Due to the delicate nature of the matter – investigations and court proceedings are still underway – I am unable to publicly upload any relevant doc apart from my account statement screenshot showing my balance. All the supporting evidence (I hold piles of it, including miles-long chat logs with NoaFX representatives and strikingly unchallengeable bank documentation) can be passed along to FPA team in their entirety for proper verification at anytime.
New thread in the Scam Alerts Folder:
Review is submitted by Gian Piero on 03/07/16
The company was first contacted about the issue on 12/02/15 the last contact was on 01/15/16
Details: Starting from mid December 2015 the company has really never provided any feedback but just kept on feeding me with excuses and void replies. Eventually Karthik Subramanian - my main contact over there - stopped communicating both on Skype and Whatsapp.
To date the very last attempt to formally contact NoaFX had been made on 21 January 2016 by my lawyers before the authorities started their investigations. Not surprisingly, such an attempt resulted in a complete waste of time:
Dear Edward Norton,
Greetings from NoaFX!
Thank you for writing to us.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
We have forwarded your request to the concern team.
They will check and process the as soon as possible. Once your request is processed we will get back to you.
Please feel free to contact us for any assistance.
Have a good day!
Regards,
Justin Troop
NoaFX Customer Support
Email: support@noafx.com | web: www.noafx.com
For all inquiries please contact our Client Services:
http://www.cmigroup.co.nz/contact.php
Telephone (24 Hours) : +64 9914 3120
Capital Market Investments Limited (HQ)
Level 1, 4 Bond Street,
Wellington 6011, New Zealand
New Zealand
Telephone : +64-9914-3120 | Fax: +64-9355-0385
On Thu, 21 Jan at 5:02 PM , Edward Norton <XXXXX> wrote:
Dear Sirs,
The account was held under the company name XXXXX for whom our client is the owner and director. The account number was XXXXX. Our client was dealing with Karthik Subramanian, who is now ignoring all attempts from our client to contact him.
We need an immediate resolution, failing which we will be aggressively proceeding with both court action, the police will be informed along with the Financial Markets Authority. Can you confirm funds will be refunded with no further delay.
Kind Regards
Edward
From: NoaFX [mailto:support@noafx.com]
Sent: Thursday 21 January 2016 07:32
To: info@noafx.com
Cc: XXXXX
Subject: Re: Reply
Dear Edward Norton,
Greetings from Noafx,
We apologize for the inconvenience caused.
It would be great if you provide us the MT4 id from which withdrawal request raised for €275.000 .
So that we can forward the withdrawal request to the accounts team and proceed further.
Please feel free to contact us for any assistance.
Regards,
Laura Brown
NoaFX Customer Support
Email: support@noafx.com | web: www.noafx.com
For all inquiries please contact our Client Services:
http://www.cmigroup.co.nz/contact.php
Telephone (24 Hours) : +64 9914 3120
Capital Market Investments Limited (HQ)
Level 1, 4 Bond Street,
Wellington 6011, New Zealand
New Zealand
Telephone : +64-9914-3120 | Fax: +64-9355-0385
On Thu, 21 Jan at 11:03 AM , Edward Norton <XXXXX> wrote:
Dear Admin,
Name: Edward Norton
Email ID: XXXXX
Comments: Dear Sirs We have been instructed by Mr Gian Piero XXXXX to assist with the withdrawal of €275.000 still held by your company contrary to our client's instructions. Our client has requested on several occasions an immediate refund of all funds held in his account, without success. We understand that your firm operates a segregated account system overseen by an external trustee, and we have also contacted today the trustee to seek clarification as to the status of our client's funds. We trust that you will be able to assist and action our client's request immediately without the need of judicial intervention but, for the avoidance of doubt, please note that we have been instructed to issue proceedings against your company and its sole shareholder both in New Zealand and in Singapore. We will refer to this correspondence when the issue of costs will arise. We await hearing from you with the utmost urgency. Yours sincerely Edward Norton for XXXXX
Company representatives' emails: Karthik Subramanian <karthik.ns@cmigroup.co.nz>
Seeni Jahangir Ghany <seeni.jg@noafx.com>