GUILTY Case# 2016-096 | Mike777 vs optionstarsglobal.com

Based on the available evidence, do you believe that OptionStarsGlobal.com is Guilty?

  • Guilty

    Votes: 77 100.0%
  • Not guilty

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    77
  • Poll closed .

Mike777

Private, 1st Class
Messages
33
Original FPA Traders Court Submission:

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

My Case is: I am submitting the case against: OptionStars.com powered by Novox Capital Ltd. a Cyprus Investment Firm registered under the laws of The Republic of Cyprus, with registration number HE292182, having its registered office at 4 Michael Georgalla Str., Engomi, Nicosia 2409, Cyprus Tel. +357 22 272 with license number 224/14 and OptionsStarsGlobal.com (there is no any info about company’s name, address and license on their website)giving service at Financial market. OptionStarsGlobal.com shows support tel. number: +44 203 769 09 14. They have same logo as optionstars.com, same support to chat, same employee working for both websites from England, same compliance department, but different Terms and Conditions documents.
Non-European Residents – Traders who do not live in Europe are not accepted at OptionStars. Instead they sent to trade with Option Stars Global which is an unlicensed broker, owned and operated by New Markets S.A. Novasage Chambers, Level 2, CCCS Building, Beach Road, Apia Samoa.
When none European clients click on Optinstars from novoxcapital.com they automatically redirected to optionstarsglobal.com
Here are email addresses of employees who were emailing to me:
Sandra Jameson, Customer Care: sandra@optionstars.com
Bonnie Richards, Senior Market Analyst, Account Manager: bonnie.r@optionstars.com, bonnierichards360@gmail.com , Bonnie.Richards@skyfx.com ,
Skype: bonnierichards360
Benjamin Dunn, Corporate Accounts, Account Manager: Benjamin.Dunn@optionstars.com
Skype: benjamin.optionstars
Compliance Department: compliance@optionstarsglobal.com , compliance@optionstars.com
Nadya Pierce, Compliance Manager
Support: support@optionstars.com
James Anderson, Executive, Account Manager: james.a@optionstarsglobal.com
direct tel.: +442037693714
My Case is:
Option Stars (Global) ignored my requests for withdraw for 2 weeks. But instead of resolving that, they stolen $42,260 CAD from my Account and suspended Account having remaining balance of $10,800 CAD with no any reason and written explanation. One week later, Optionstarsglobal.com refunded $13,000 CAD, closed my Account, emailed their explanation and updated their Terms and Conditions to cover excuse.
I opened this case with intention to:
• Return all my money of $40,060 CAD to my visa account in Canada.
• Warn traders and investors about company’s strategy, tricks and manipulations to get their clients deposits lost.
• Warn about Withdrawal problems and lawlessness fraudulent activities.
I am attaching the proof for each word and issue described in this case
Here is story:
I was contacted by Bonnie Richards in July 2015 and convinced to open forex account with SkyFX (which is recently labeled as a scam) and deposit $7,500 US. After several risky trades leading by Bonnie Richards, finally I have got a Margin Call and lost all my deposits.
At the same time, Bonnie convinced me to open binary account and try trades on Option Stars binary company’s platform. Finally, to be a part of “Corporate level”, I agreed to deposit $35,000 CAD and have a Bonus of total of $95,000 with Trading Volume obligation of $2,900,000 – BIG MISTAKE!!!! Bonus never be yours and will be cancelled after 1st any withdrawal, even if you have done trading volume. Bonus ties you with withdrawals and makes you more risky in trading.
On the beginning all seemed fine. However, roughly 1 month later, this went it horribly wrong. I lost about $40,000 CAD by following signals from Bonnie in 1 day!!! And I lost almost all remaining money following “corporate level” signals from Mattew Nolan during the next day!!!! That account, having some funds and large volume of trading liability become dead with no future. With that account, I made 1541 trades, completed $894,455 trading volume and lost $128,239 in total.
DO NOT TRUST ACCOUNT MANAGERS!!!! This lesson cost me $35,000.
After several months later, I was contacted by Benjamin Dunn. He promised to help me recover this loss and asked me to give him a chance to prove his ability to do it. I agreed to deposit $2,000 to new liquid account, which Benjamin opened for me as Account Manager. After several winning signals making a profit, he convinced me to give him credit card number and made several deposits to reach $35,000 in total. I really hopped to recover my loss…After series of losing signals from Benjamin I refused of his trading sessions to follow his signals and started trading on my own.
"Basically the account manager will lure traders in with series of accurate signals, but once the manager sucks him/her dry out of fund, then the client will be given series of losing trade signals in order for them wipe out their account hoping to recovering from the loosing trade. The trick here is that the clients are pulling the trigger on option, so no one but the client is to be blame. The list of account managers on the other end gives out fake name, so no one will be accounted for those losing trades"
This is not simple at the OptionStars, to have a liquid account, be independent trader and make a profit. Company has lot of options to make your life more complicated and act against their clients:
- Price manipulations, turn on spreads (See attachment 1)
- Set up your trading limit to $200 when you have obligation to make trading volume and funds of $32,000 on your account (See attachment 2)
- “technical issues” with the platform(See attachment 3)
- Ignoring your requests to solve issues (See attachment 4)
- Withdrawal difficulties (See attachment 5)
- Blaming traders in abusing the platform to take money from traders account and suspend the access(See attachment 6)
- Misrepresentative advertising (See attachment 7)
- Violating Privacy Policy (See attachment 8)
Finally, I made a profit to recover all my loss, but optionstars decided to wipe out several winning trades with significant profit from trading history for amount of $42,260 CAD and suspend my account with remaining funds of $10,800.
Week later, after my complaint to compliance deportment, I received email:
“Dear Mr. Mykhaylo Ivanov,

Account number: 50--649
Account email identification: ------------

Your initial deposit was fully refunded. Your account is now close.

You have signed that have read agreed and understood to the company Term and condition.

We have found that you abused the system, under our terms and condition we have the full right to refund you and close the account.


42. Company’s rights
a) The Company reserves the right to suspend the operation of this site or sections thereof under the following circumstances:
b) when, as a result of political, economic, military or monetary events (including unusual market volatility or illiquidity) or any circumstances outside the control, responsibility and power of the Company, the continued operation of this site or the System shall not be reasonably practicable without materially and adversely affecting and prejudicing your interests or the Company, or if, in the sole discretion of the Company, a price cannot be calculated for financial contracts; or
c) when there is a breakdown in the means of communication normally employed in determining the price or value of any of the financial contracts or where the price or value of any of the financial contracts cannot be promptly or accurately calculated; or
d) When the Company has reason to suspect that the System was abused by you or that you have used some means in order to affect or manipulate the System in general or the price of a specific Contract in particular. e) Under such circumstances, other than in the case of abuse or manipulation of the System, the Company may at its sole discretion (with or without notice) close out your open financial contracts at prices it considers fair and reasonable at such a time and no claims may be entertained against the Company in connection thereto. f) In case of abuse or manipulation of the System, the Company may at its sole discretion take any measures it deems fit and appropriate under the said circumstances.

43. Improper or Abusive Trading Should you execute trading strategies acting in bad faith, that is, you or any representative of yours trading on your behalf is committing any improper or abusive trading act such as for example:
a) fraud/illegal actions that led to the transaction;
b) orders placed based on manipulated prices as a result of system errors or system malfunctions;
c) arbitrage trading on prices offered by our platforms as a result of systems errors; and/or
d) coordinated transactions by related parties in order to take advantage of systems errors and delays on systems updates. Then the Company will have the right to: i. adjust the price spreads available to you; and/or ii. restrict your access to streaming, instantly tradable quotes, including providing manual quotation only; and/or iii. obtain from your account any historic trading profits that you have gained through such abuse of liquidity as determined by us at any time during our trading relationship; and/or iv. reject an order or to cancel a trade; and/or v. immediately terminate our trading relationship

LSE started to conduct and intraday auction from March 21st exactly after 12.00 GMT (11.00 GMT after March 27th) and for some reason Reuters issued quotes from these auctions despite the fact that there were no live trading available for public.

Attached an excel file with quotes we have received from Reuters for LSE assets subject of cancellation.

For every TradeID we highlighted in blue the quotes which were wrong.
In orange I highlighted that exact quotes used for every trade.

You can see that Ask is lower than Bid which is clear indication that these prices are wrong. The difference between Bid and Ask during the time of these wrong quotes was so big that it resulted in spike of average price which this user used to gained unfair advantage(due to wrong quotes).

You repeated this strategy every other day after first trade exactly after wrong quotes started to come in.

Attach screenshots from Reuters quotes history to show that there were no official quotes history(no bid and ask prices) for the time of auctions for these particular assets because there was no live trading during the time of auction.



Best Regards,





Compliance Department
compliance@optionstarsglobal.com



I AM NOT AGREED WITH THEIR EXPLANATION!!!!!!!!
1. Issue is not resolved. Optionstars HAVE NOT fully refunded my initial deposit. Optionstarsglobal.com refunded $13,000 CAD and closed my Account. The total of withdrawals was $30,000, but initial deposit was $70,000 CAD.
2. I have never signed that have read agreed and understood to the company Terms and Conditions. There is no any Agreement and my signatures on it. The Terms And Conditions I found on optionstarsglobal.com website doesn’t look like Agreement - there is no any legal info about company’s name, address and license on their website. The company added paragraph 42 and 43 on public at the moment when they sent me explanation. They are changing this document at company’s convenience. Yes, I have read Terms and Conditions several times and latest paragraph was 41.
3. I haven’t abused the system. I traded spikes on optionstars platform and could lose money as well. In case I lost, I would never could ask and hope that company can wipe out these trades from my Trades History.
4. They ignored all my emails and haven’t sent me unique reference number for my complaint.
5. I assumed that optionstars and optionstarsglobal are the same lawless companies and they are scams.

New thread in the Scam Alerts Folder:

Review is submitted by OptionStarsGlobal.com on 04/01/16

The company was first contacted about the issue on 02/25/16 the last contact was on 04/25/16

Details: Week later, after my complaint to compliance deportment, I received email:
“Dear Mr. Mykhaylo Ivanov,

Account number: 50--649
Account email identification: ------------

Your initial deposit was fully refunded. Your account is now close.

You have signed that have read agreed and understood to the company Term and condition.

We have found that you abused the system, under our terms and condition we have the full right to refund you and close the account.


42. Company’s rights
a) The Company reserves the right to suspend the operation of this site or sections thereof under the following circumstances:
b) when, as a result of political, economic, military or monetary events (including unusual market volatility or illiquidity) or any circumstances outside the control, responsibility and power of the Company, the continued operation of this site or the System shall not be reasonably practicable without materially and adversely affecting and prejudicing your interests or the Company, or if, in the sole discretion of the Company, a price cannot be calculated for financial contracts; or
c) when there is a breakdown in the means of communication normally employed in determining the price or value of any of the financial contracts or where the price or value of any of the financial contracts cannot be promptly or accurately calculated; or
d) When the Company has reason to suspect that the System was abused by you or that you have used some means in order to affect or manipulate the System in general or the price of a specific Contract in particular. e) Under such circumstances, other than in the case of abuse or manipulation of the System, the Company may at its sole discretion (with or without notice) close out your open financial contracts at prices it considers fair and reasonable at such a time and no claims may be entertained against the Company in connection thereto. f) In case of abuse or manipulation of the System, the Company may at its sole discretion take any measures it deems fit and appropriate under the said circumstances.

43. Improper or Abusive Trading Should you execute trading strategies acting in bad faith, that is, you or any representative of yours trading on your behalf is committing any improper or abusive trading act such as for example:
a) fraud/illegal actions that led to the transaction;
b) orders placed based on manipulated prices as a result of system errors or system malfunctions;
c) arbitrage trading on prices offered by our platforms as a result of systems errors; and/or
d) coordinated transactions by related parties in order to take advantage of systems errors and delays on systems updates. Then the Company will have the right to: i. adjust the price spreads available to you; and/or ii. restrict your access to streaming, instantly tradable quotes, including providing manual quotation only; and/or iii. obtain from your account any historic trading profits that you have gained through such abuse of liquidity as determined by us at any time during our trading relationship; and/or iv. reject an order or to cancel a trade; and/or v. immediately terminate our trading relationship

LSE started to conduct and intraday auction from March 21st exactly after 12.00 GMT (11.00 GMT after March 27th) and for some reason Reuters issued quotes from these auctions despite the fact that there were no live trading available for public.

Attached an excel file with quotes we have received from Reuters for LSE assets subject of cancellation.

For every TradeID we highlighted in blue the quotes which were wrong.
In orange I highlighted that exact quotes used for every trade.

You can see that Ask is lower than Bid which is clear indication that these prices are wrong. The difference between Bid and Ask during the time of these wrong quotes was so big that it resulted in spike of average price which this user used to gained unfair advantage(due to wrong quotes).

You repeated this strategy every other day after first trade exactly after wrong quotes started to come in.

Attach screenshots from Reuters quotes history to show that there were no official quotes history(no bid and ask prices) for the time of auctions for these particular assets because there was no live trading during the time of auction.



Best Regards,





Compliance Department
compliance@optionstarsglobal.com



I AM NOT AGREED WITH THEIR EXPLANATION!!!!!!!!
1. Issue is not resolved. Optionstars HAVE NOT fully refunded my initial deposit. Optionstarsglobal.com refunded $13,000 CAD and closed my Account. The total of withdrawals was $30,000, but initial deposit was $70,000 CAD.
2. I have never signed that have read agreed and understood to the company Terms and Conditions. There is no any Agreement and my signatures on it. The Terms And Conditions I found on optionstarsglobal.com website doesn’t look like Agreement - there is no any legal info about company’s name, address and license on their website. The company added paragraph 42 and 43 on public at the moment when they sent me explanation. They are changing this document at company’s convenience. Yes, I have read Terms and Conditions several times and latest paragraph was 41.
3. I haven’t abused the system. I traded spikes on optionstars platform and could lose money as well. In case I lost, I would never could ask and hope that company can wipe out these trades from my Trades History.
4. They ignored all my emails and haven’t sent me unique reference number for my complaint.
5. I assumed that optionstars and optionstarsglobal are the same lawless companies and they are scams.

Company representatives' emails: Sandra Jameson, Customer Care: <sandra@optionstars.com>
Bonnie Richards, Senior Market Analyst, Account Manager: <bonnie.r@optionstars.com>
Benjamin Dunn, Corporate Accounts, Account Manager: <Benjamin.Dunn@optionstars.com>
Compliance Department: <compliance@optionstarsglobal.com>
Nadya Pierce, Compliance Manager <compliance@optionstars.com>
Support: <support@optionstars.com>
James Anderson, Executive, Account Manager: <james.a@optionstarsglobal.com>

 

Attachments

  • 9. Profit removal evidence.docx
    2 MB · Views: 9
I am adding more evidences, but quality is poor due to files size limitation. I can email word format files per request.
 

Attachments

  • 1.Price manipulation by OptionStarsGlobal.pdf
    936 KB · Views: 30
  • 2.Trade size limitation.pdf
    258.8 KB · Views: 13
  • 4. Ignoring your requests.pdf
    264.1 KB · Views: 16
  • 5. Withdraw issues.pdf
    296.9 KB · Views: 23
  • 6. Have I abused the platform.pdf
    330.8 KB · Views: 15
  • 7. Misleading advertising..pdf
    310.7 KB · Views: 17
  • 8. Brech of Privacy Policy.pdf
    143 KB · Views: 12
I've gone ahead and sent a formal FPA invitation. Please post an update on Friday afternoon to let me know if you've heard anything new from them.

Have you asked your bank about a chargeback?
 
I needed confirm by phone all these deposits and took responsibility for them. I called to visa RBC Canada and they told that nothing I can do as I am responsible
for confirmed by myself deposits. All deposits were done through same visa card.
Tr.Date Post.Date CAD Credit card Merchant
7/22/2015 7/24/2015 1,000.00 RBC Visa NOVOX*OPTIONSTARS 442037690745
7/23/2015 7/27/2015 5,000.00 RBC Visa NOVOX*OPTIONSTARS 442037690745
7/23/2015 7/27/2015 4,000.00 RBC Visa NOVOX*OPTIONSTARS 442037690745
7/28/2015 7/30/2015 5,000.00 RBC Visa NOVOX*OPTIONSTARS 442037690745
8/13/2015 8/17/2015 1,000.00 RBC Visa NOV*OPTIONSTARS 44203808020
8/13/2015 8/17/2015 10,000.00 RBC Visa NOVOX*OPTIONSTARS 442037690745
8/15/2015 8/18/2015 5,000.00 RBC Visa NOV*OPTIONSTARS 44203808020
8/22/2015 8/25/2015 5,000.00 RBC Visa NOV*OPTIONSTARS 44203808020
12/15/2015 12/16/2015 5,000.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
12/22/2015 12/23/2015 3,500.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
12/23/2015 12/24/2015 1,500.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
1/7/2016 1/8/2016 5,000.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
1/11/2016 1/12/2016 5,000.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
1/12/2016 1/13/2016 5,000.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
1/18/2016 1/19/2016 5,000.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
1/20/2016 1/21/2016 5,000.00 RBC Visa FBX*OPTIONSTARSGLOBAL 442038070647
Total: 71,000.00
 
Chargebacks can come for several reasons. The 2 biggest ones are:

1. Unauthorized charges. Those are charges you did not make and are not responsible for.
2. Failure to provide the goods/services promised. If a broker claims trades are "guaranteed to win" and those trades lose, that's failure to provide a promised service. If money is in your account and the broker refuses to provide the withdrawals, that's also a failure to provide a promised service.

If your bank denies the second reason is valid, you may want to get professional asssitance from a Chargeback company. WinChargeback has been active inside the FPA. They have a press release here.


Anyone care to wager if OptionStars remains silent?
 
I can't fully comprehend how these kind of forex brokers are growing like a WEED in a largely regulated financial world of banks and stock markets. They should be shot in front of their children.GUILTY
 
My heart goes out to you, Mike. I hope you will get your funds back. Let's all avoid Options trading like the plague!
 
clear guilty and a standard process applied to bankrupt client. False promises for VIP traders ==> empty account ==> recovery department ===> empty again. There is no recovery department at all and they use all sorts of stories to get deposited as much as possible.

And yes as "Pharaoh" pointed above, raise a credit charge back immediately with rule no.'s so that banks are obliged to accept your case.
 
Hi Mike. Try whatever you can to recover your money although it's an uphill battle.Do not loose hope,file the chargeback as Pharoah has advised.Those faceless scammers will rot in hell.GUILTY
 
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