Hello EMPfx, when will these traders be paid?

[Scam Investigations Committee]

EMPfx was a very well rated broker. Back in October, they announced that the brokerage was closing and that all clients would be paid. Payments were received by some and not others.

The FPA Forums Team contacted EMP fx on October 29th and asked what was going on. EMPfx support wrote back the same day and said...

Yes we have been bought by another company that is not interested in retail forex but interested in introducing other financial products. We emailed all our members and informed them that we will be ceasing activity in "forex trading" and requested they send us their wiring instruction to send them their money back up to the last penny. The wiring back is happening on first come first serve bases and every day we are processing hundreds of wires. The whole process if our calculations are right should not take more than 6 weeks for everyone to get his money back. In summary to answer your main concern, we are paying everyone back as we are real and not a scam.
Thanks in advance.

Payments continued to be made to some traders, but then ceased. After the 6 week mark passed, the FPA Forums Team again tried to contact EMPfx. There was no response.

FPA member PipStar opened a scam complaint. FPA Investigator Tessa also could get no response from EMPfx. In order to be fair, she gave them until January 6th to respond, in case they were short staffed over the holidays. A final reminder also was ignored.

Under the circumstances, we have to consider the possibility that some of the payments reported as received in our forums were not actual reports. Many of those posting on this issue were brand new members. It is possible that some forum accounts were created by EMPfx to make it appear that more payments were being sent even after payments had ceased.

Whether that is true or not, we do know that EMPfx failed to respond to the FPA's followup inquiries and that FPA member Pipstar did not receive money owed to him or an explanation of why money wasn't owed to him. Failing to pay money owed to traders is the FPA's first definition of scam.

We now consider EMPfx to be a scam. We recommend that anyone still owed money by them contact the proper government authorities and file a complaint. In the USA, ic3.gov would be where to start.

Please post links to the proper place to file these complaints in other countries to this thread. If anyone finds out any information about how to contact EMPfx or who the people behind the company are, please post that information to this thread.



Official FPA Scam Finding against EMPfx.com

PipStar's original thread about EMPfx closing

PipStar's thread in the FPA's Scam Alerts Folder

EMPfx.com review page

This article contains advice on splitting your trading funds between brokers

.

 

[LEXngton]

I was one of the posters who reported they had recieved all their money back from EMPFX. I understand FPA hesitation to believe it though seeing EMPFX turned out to be such a scam company and never replied back to them after their first response. I'm also aware however of 2 other people who had live accounts with them who recieved all their funds back, one $2,000 and other over $13,000. I myself recieved little over $2,500. All 3 of us recieved our entire account balance eventually.

Still its totally unacceptable that EMPFX paid out to some live clients, their full account balances, yet left others high and dry, not paying them a single dime! Their definately scammers in the end and anyone who did get scammed should take any legal action as FPA has suggested. Best of luck.

 

[AsstModerator]

I'm glad to see a reliable report of some payments. I personally have some suspicions about a few of the "1 post and gone" recruits who said they got paid.

Anyone who did get paid, please ask your bank for as much information about the origin of the payment as possible. Post the information here. That may help those who didn't get their money to track down the people behind EMPFX.

 

[Propheteer]

a few questions

once again i want to thank FPA for the valuable work and info we recieved.
on the other hand i would like to know, how come brokers companies comes to an end like this? is because their members are making big profits, and the brokers are not able to cover their money? or some brokers are just scaming traders once their accounts are big enough to run away with others people money?
Im trading with ACM and a feel very confident with them, however, it seems that in fx nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to brokerage.
what do you think?
once again thank you very much FPA.:nerd:

 

[stevesmain]

info

I was one of the fortunate ones who did receive all the account balance.

I received some info that it was the chairman of EMP who shut the business down after making a poor decision, took the money and ran as they say. Not wanting to take the bad with the good!
The staff got the shaft too!

 

[yurps]

SNW

Ah so is this the brokerage that has been filling some traders using the Secret News Weapon? No wonder they didn't last long...the serial snipers probably were first to get out their profits.

 

[leob1928]

how to get money back?

I live in South AMERICA and I do not know which entity to contact to get my money back.

 

[PipStar]

Thank you FPA and especially Tessa for looking into this matter.

You'd have to think that any possibility of getting money from empfx is now remote. May be some traders got their money back but it looks like there wasn't enough to pay everyone. I didn't have much money with them only about 2k. But in the end empfx acted dishonestly and I particularly feel sorry for those who report having lost 10-13 k with this broker if not more.

It is strange that they voluntarily sent everyone a withdrawal form only to fail to honour some. Normally, they would run away with all the money so you wonder why they paid some and then stopped. Just figure this: Without the FPA empfx would have got away quietly with this scam. Now that it is publicised on FPA forums and elsewhere I hope it brings some shame on them although we may never receive our money.

Once again, thanks FPA for your efforts.

 

[B10BT]

empfx root

The website Free MetaTrader 4! MT4 - Expert Advisors - EMPFX is still live. The copyright notice refers to E-Money Power Ltd, which has the website E-Money Power | Forex Recommendations | Forex and Stock trading Online Courses | Currency Trading.

The owner of that website is Ziad Melhem (whois info cut/pasted below). It's a good guess that the company Network Solutions is an IT service provider not connected with E-Money Power.

There is a blogger Ziad Melhem at Ziad Melhem's Financial Advisory Blog.

I have no confirmation that the two Ziad Melhem's are the same person. However there is a blog entry about the benefits of opening a demo account to practice trading. The blog entry contains a link which will open a demo account... at Free MetaTrader 4! MT4 - Expert Advisors - EMPFX


Maybe the Army can take a look....



Registrant:
Melhem, Ziad
ATTN: EMONEYPOWER.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 459
Drums, PA. 18222


Domain Name: EMONEYPOWER.COM


Administrative Contact:
Melhem, Ziad
E-Money Power
ATTN: EMONEYPOWER.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 459
Drums, PA 18222
570-708-8780

 

[Pharaoh]

Both sites claim to belong to the same parent company.

The bad news is that Network Solutions is just a registrar, so the postal address probably won't be too helpful.