Looking for victims of potential fraud at Plus500 UK Limited

[Freedom Capital]

Looking for victims of potential fraud at Plus500 UK Limited

Company sold monthly Bitcoin CFD instruments to their customer base. Around mid November Plus500 suddenly closed all outstanding monthly Bitcoin instruments (expiry date 30/11 !) without consent from their clients. Clients found out by change that their BTC exposure "disappeared" despite monthly contract. Positions were closed at a BTC price of USD 582. As a consequence clients suffered significant losses due to lack of BTC exposure when prices continued to rise beyond USD 1200 in the second half of November.

I am currently in the process of collecting information to file regulatory and legal actions against Plus500 UK Limited. I want the regulatory authorities to have a look at this case and to decide if we have to deal with a fraud case or not.

If there are more investors who suffered from this "very honest" treatment of clients, please contact me here and we can share information etc. going forward.

[HairyMaclairy]

FYI Plus500 advertises heavily in Australia.  Don't know if Australians affected.  Class action suits are widely used in Australia and it is possible to get litigation funding for high value suits that have a good chance of success. 

[tom.hashemi]

FYI Plus500 advertises heavily in Australia.  Don't know if Australians affected.  Class action suits are widely used in Australia and it is possible to get litigation funding for high value suits that have a good chance of success. 

Plus500 will be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) here in the UK. They would be the logical first point of call to find out whether there has been any illegalities.

[Freedom Capital]

Out of the blue Plus500 stopped the Monthy Bitcoin CFD (existing contracts with lifetime until 30/11) and offered a Daily Bitcoin CFD instead.
Customers were not informed properly and had no possibility to react. Besides this a Daily instrument is no compensation for a monthly contract.
Assuming flat prices, there will not be much left if you have to pay 3% or so spread 2x daily for 2 weeks or 1 month.

Plus500 refers to their terms and conditions, which state that they are allowed to change the structure of existing instruments if they have no hedging possibility.
Initially they claimed they had difficulites to hedge due to higher volatility (but volatility was in line with previous years).
 
In a more detailed second response letter, they now claim they had relied on only one single hedging counter party.
With very short notice, this hedging counter party stopped the monthly hedging agreement and was only willing to do a daily hedging agreement instead.
This was the reason why they had to close all outstanding Monthy Bitcoin instruments and offered Daily Bitcoin CFDs instead.
 
I see two alternatives:
 
1) They tell the truth when it comes to this hedging agreement with only one single counter party. But even then I would argue that they had all hedging possibilities they needed
(all exchanges working properly) but they explicitly choose not to hedge. This was their own choice and can not be a reason to break existing contracts.
 
2) They do not tell the truth when it comes to this hedging agreement with only one single counter party. This would not make the situation better for them...

I think the company was founded in Israel and then moved to Cyprus. They have a licence to operate within the EU, therfor they should comply with EU laws.
If not, they should loose the licence to operate within the EU.

I will have the regulators and the legal authorities to have a look at this issue.

If you want to contact me, you can post here or via PM.

[bitnpieces]

Did this ever get any traction?
I just noticed looking at records that 2 of my positions expired on 21 Nov 2013.
Opened 490.33
Expired 616.40

Open 550
Expired 616.40
Sorry to open an old thread, was looking up a related search and found this

[Giambrone]

It's been a few years, but there is now an externally financed group action being organized in the UK. There is no upfront cost to participate, and we want to hear from any individual who lost money at Plus500. More information and sign-up details are available here: plus500.giambronelaw.com