OptionFM (Binary Online)… Deceitful highway men

On the 2 January 2017, I opened an account with OptionFM, having checked them out on Google (all positive) and deposited £250, I received a call from David Smith who introduced himself as a senior manager with OptionFM.

He advised me I would be allocated an account manager and that these were of various abilities and were graded as tier 1 ,2, 3 traders etc. tier 1 being the most competent, experienced and successful.

I was appointed to Adam Young as my account manager and during our telephone conversation he told me he was a Tier One trader who was very good and experienced. He has extensive knowledge of the markets and manages accounts with more than £20k deposited, a lesser amount than that and my account would be managed by a less experienced account manager from the tier 2 or 3 level, who were likely to make numerous bad trades. He urged me to increase my deposit so as to a) qualify for a Tier 1 manager and b) be eligible for bonuses.

However, for him to manage my account I had to agree to a condition not to trade on my own without his guidance and only to trade following his explicit instructions. Using his risk management, losses would be minimised to a small percentage of the capital in the account. Capital would thus be protected and losses kept to a minimum. I agreed that this was a sound way of trading and that I would only trade with his instructions.

I increased the funding of my account by an additional £18000 using a Mastercard Credit card and a Visa Debit card, Declaration of Deposit forms (stating the sum involved and acknowledging the risk involved in trading binary options) were emailed to me for each deposit which I signed and emailed back. My account then had mysterious bonuses added to it. £55.00 was then wired back to my account to 'Prove the link', or something similar. Then we started trading.

Trading during the first 4 days went well with a few losses and some impressive wins, culminating on Friday 6 January 2017 with a good win on EUR/USD due to the US Non Farm Payroll monthly announcement. Further trading on Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 January also had successes. My account now stood at £36876.05 including bonuses.

However, on Wednesday 11 January a notice was displayed on my OptionFM account page which read

Dear Option.FM ClientDear Option.FM Client,

We’d like to inform you that Option.FM will be minimizing its operations in your region due to regulatory constraints.

If you have eligible balance in your account, you may continue trading by clicking here.

If you’d like to withdraw your eligible funds, you are kindly requested to file a withdrawal request through your account and we will refund you the full amount of your net balance. You can withdraw funds by clicking here.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at earliest convenience.

Sincerely, Option.FM Management

Withdrawal Continue Trading

Querying this with my account manager, Adam, by email and on live chat on the trading platform, he advised me to withdraw the total account funds back to my bank and he would contact me on Monday 16 January. This I did, but by Monday 16 January no funds had been received and the request for funds transfer at OptionFM still had a pending status. I conversed with Adam my account manager using the Live Chat facility and advised him no funds had transferred and still had a pending status. He advised he would raise it with his accounts department and we should continue trading.

He then asked if I had traded Sixty Seconds options before and I said I hadn’t. He then instructed me to go to the Trading Platform, select Currencies EUR/USD, 08:50 expiry and type in $4000 in the amount box select Call and take the trade. He then said select the Sixty Seconds option, select EUR/USD, type in £1500 in the amount box select Call and take the trade. He then said keep taking more Call trades at that price until he tells me to change to Put. I used Live chat to say the account was running low and Adam said it’s all right as I still had positions open. The first 10 Call trades lost the next 8 Call trades won, the next 15 Call trades lost. I was then told to change the position at the same price from Call to Put, and of the next 7 trades only 2 won. He then said change back to Currencies, select EUR/USD and the 09:10 expiry, enter an amount of £7000 on a Put and take the trade. This trade also lost.

This whole trading period lasted only 16 minutes and my account went from £36876 to £1666. Using Live Chat, I asked Adam ‘what on earth was he doing?’ and then ‘was this his idea of sound money management?’. I received no further communication from him for the rest of the day …. Just silence. (And silence since) I was shocked! Under his instruction my account had been decimated in 16 minutes. The action so fast that as a novice I had no chance to follow the progress (success or failure) of the trades and had put all my trust in the experience of my account manager Adam. I have not been able to get any response from him since.

At 03:20 the following morning I received a call from family informing me my Father was dying and would probably pass very soon. I travelled up to Scotland to be with him and the family first thing the following morning, he died on the Saturday. During the following 2 weeks, sorting out his estate, I have had time to consider the events with Adam and OptionFM.

In hind sight it would seem that Adam set out to deliberately empty my account. My inexperience of trading and my misplaced trust, in believing Adam would follow the sound risk limitation and capital conservation policies we had agreed to when I opened the account, proved to be fatal. OptionFM were indeed a deceitful and elaborate scam operation. Since my return this weekend (two weeks away) nothing has been heard from Adam. I have since requested a withdrawal of the remaining account balance but the request remains as ‘Pending’.

I believe OptionFM did not fulfil their promise of prudent money management and deliberately made bad trade choices in order to empty my account. Can I make a chargeback on my cards, both with NatWest Bank UK, as the service I thought I was buying was not provided? This is all most distressing as I now have debts to service from a small income. Has anybody got any helpful ideas how I might recover from this?

I am devastated at the suddenness of loss of capital and angry as hell with myself for being sucked in to this, now, obvious deceitful criminal setup. Writing all these events down though has had a therapeutic effect and I’m less stressed but still mad as hell at the devious ‘highway men’ at OptionFM.

I have just had an email from this broker, but it's from a company called Binary Online, advising their web platform has been updated and improved. I presume that Binary Online must be a parent company of OptionFM.