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Reza Mokhtarian of Capital Trust Markets has made threats against the FPA
Reza Mokhtarian is the CEO and owner of Capital Trust Markets. He and his company have been drawing my attention for a long time now.
In July of 2014, I had to temporarily suspend review representative access for Capital Trust Markets for violations of client confidentiality. I also added warnings to the review page. Someone operating from inside of CTM posted a client's email address and phone number in a reply to a revew. Reza Mokhtarian blamed one of his employees and promised it would not happen again, so the warning was removed.
Reza Mokhtarian was very aggressive in defending the CTM review page. He frequently accused anyone who left negative reviews of cheating or working for competitors. He seemed unable to handle the concept that a real client might be less than fully satisfied with his company.
Reza also went to great lengths to keep former clients from posting negative reviews. He'd have them sign agreements acknowledging they cheated and promising to not leave negative reviews in exchange for a cash settlement. When one client decided to break the oath of silence, Reza's reaction was to email this to the client...
I have already contacted the embassy here and our lawyer which is contacting your local police department. You have 12 hours to reply to us stating your fake review otherwise we will pursue you with full legal action.
You were not only paid but you participated in illegal trading, you signed a none defamation agreement and also acknowledged receipt of your funds.
Reza Mokhtarian seems to view many things as parts of a conspiracy to attack him. On February 10, 2015, Reza accused me of deliberately moving old complaints to the top of the list of reviews for Capital Trust Markets...
May I know WHY you have decided to bring an almost 1 year old thread to the top of our page, may I know why you have refused to remove the fake negative reviews against us however in that same time posted a NEW attack against us which CLEARLY is an attack by your members, a client who never had a live account with us who has decided to re-ignite a complaint from almost a year ago that you have brought to the TOP of the list, is this a direct attack against us? Please let us know if we that is the case. There is ZERO logic in you bringing front and center an OLD post from PAGE2 onto the front page, you are directly condoning and promoting the practices of broker extortion by allowing clients such as "BOON" and "JAPANESE BOY" to do what they are doing. Getting our lawyers involved with the DMCA will make this a costly venture for everyone. I ask that you remove the false reviews against us, furthermore Brunner HAS requested you to remove the review and you have chosen not to, I have spoken to him already. Please also move the BOON thread EXACTLY where it belongs on the second page as we are not wasting our time replying to a waste of life such as BOON. Please reply back to us asap as now it seems like there is a direct attack from the FPA essentially against us.
My reply...
I didn't decide to bring a year old review to page one. The reviewer left a followup to a 6 month old review. Reviews are ordered by most recent review, including followups. The review is in exactly the same location as a positive followup on a year old review would be. Are you asking me to provide some sort of special privilege where you can pick and chose which reviews get to be on page 1?...
If you think approving a negative review is a direct attack by the FPA, please explain why so many positive reviews were approved. You can also explain to me about the negative review that didn't pass moderation minutes before the followup review was approved...
You can also explain why I removed the warning about your employee posting confidential client information. I've gone out of my way to assist you from day 1 and this is the thanks I get?
Please do not reply until you've taken some time to think about this. I do not have time to discuss wild conspiracy theories about the FPA itself attacking you every time there is a negative review. If you want to get into a conspiracy theory discussion, explain why Japan was never mentioned by you until after a negative review came in from a Japanese client.
After several more exchanges, I told him this...
If you can't handle the occasional client or potential client posting negative items, I think you've picked the wrong industry to work in.
If I removed every review that a company owner or representative said was nonsensical, I could fire my moderation team and set the system to automatically approve 5 star reviews and delete everything else. You've already verified that Japanese Boy is a client. That means the review came from a client. If his allegations are false, then confront him with facts.
Later in February, there was another review that Reza Mokhtarian was sure belonged to someone who signed one of these non-disclosure agreements. He then wrote to me...
What he has done is breach of contract which if I get my lawyer involved as I have to now it will involve the FPA as well, why not just remove what he wrote? Why is that such a big deal Bill? Otherwise to protect myself I have to post this letter he has signed under his comments, it just turns into one big headache, same thing for Sean when you can just delete them and if they contact you say HEY look at this info, or THREEWAY email us. These guys are being malicious nothing more and one has a signed none defamation agreement which also says he was FULLY PAID and the other is under investigation.
I asked him what he meant by involving the FPA. Reza replied...
Well think about it, he's written a fake review after signing a non-defamation agreement, admitting to illegal trading, accepting the receipt of his funds and called us a SCAM BROKER which is defamation and slander and to top it off, he's written it on the FPA. So naturally I will want to get it removed off of your site, wouldn't you? Why do I deserve to be screwed over by some dummy in Pakistan?
I could see where this was heading. My response was...
I've been thinking about it all the time since late 2007.
Think about this. There are over 4000 companies in the reviews, and almost 3000 are still active. Many do not like the fact that clients can sometimes post things which may or may not be libelous or defamatory. Others use legal threats to try to silence clients who have legitimate complaints.
Think very carefully before answering this question...
Reza then made his first indirect threat against the FPA.
This doesn't have anything to do with me though, how does it? I have two avenues here, completely ignore the comments on the FPA and launch an onslaught of my own domains (I can) and rank them right at the top (and I can) or attack the sites which have the defamatory information written on it which I would never do because it's not the sites fault that idiots posted on it, which is why I always with full diplomacy approach the site with honesty and a humble behavior. I have been nothing short of classy when dealing with you guys and never once resorted to even making a minor threat against the FPA, so my question is this. If you have genuine proof that a review is fake or defamatory, why leave it up there? Especially when it's against a broker who has always been open and transparent with you and has chosen to not turn his back on the FPA like a lot of big name brokers have. I have never asked you to do anything that is not warranted, in the case of Masood, it is a clear cut case, and Sean the same thing where in fact I HAD given you the name of the account already in the past. At this point my choices are believe that you are EQUALLY fair to both parties or I literally have to say it's a useless battle to even upset myself and just let everyone write whatever they want. So if you think it's pointless for me to be even discussing or worrying about anything that comes on your site than just let me know and I won't even take your time or my time anymore. I can't stress myself out over this stuff any more than it already has. Let me know your thoughts.
My response...
Do you really feel entitled to pre-screen every review you get? Imagine if 3000 companies did that. I'd have to charge reviewers a minimum of $50 per review for the privilege of sharing their opinion so I could hire staff to discuss each review at length with each company...
I've bent over backwards to try to assist you and you respond with threats and also have the nerve to complain that you feel stressed? I even set your page to have all reviews checked by myself. I see my efforts were in vain and all you really want is 100% control over what your clients can and cannot say about your company.
Now I wonder what sort of person I've been wasting my time with, considering the caliber of the scam companies that have previously launched anti-FPA assaults.
The FPA does not negotiate or discuss issues while under threat. I am not going to continue any further communication of any sort with you until you PERMANENTLY AND IRREVOCABLY withdraw all threats against the FPA.
Reza then backpedaled and claimed he was only planning to launch positive SEO for other sites he owned. He even declared that I was his friend.
On April 10th, I pointed out a new complaint had been submitted by a reviewer identified as Monamo. Reza Mokhtarian replied
Ah thanks for letting me know, don't post it, Monamo is thanks to a dumb account manager I had, I'll fix Monamo's issue this upcoming week, will contact her in the morning, thanks for reminding me.
Since I was expecting Reza to keep his word, I stupidly agreed to delay the review in the moderation queue.
Then a review came in from someone named Yuki. I held back the review and engaged the pair of them in an email conversation. Everything appeared to be resolved.
On April 15th, a US trader posted in Scam Alerts. Reza Mokhtarian did everything he could to convince the guy to withdraw the post. I made it very plain to all involved that once a post goes up, it's not coming down. Reza just needed to pay the guy. I also let him know that having a US client for a New Zealand registered broker was likely to get him in trouble with the CFTC. I explained that fast payment and closing of US accounts was the best way to avoid trouble.
Reza continued to not pay Monamo, Yuki, and the US trader. He'd often answer other parts of emails and skip replying to questions about these payments. Due to some involvement of a US account manager, Reza claimed the US trader wasn't owed his profits.
I realize now that holding back a review even if the reviewer and company appear to have reached an agreement was a terrible mistake on my part. I honestly thought I was helping to get issues resolved more quickly. In retrospect, I can see I was harming the clients by hiding the complaints, even if it was done with the permission of the clients. The one thing I can thank Reza Mokhtarian for in all of this is reminding me that certain rules should have NO exceptions ever.