Some of you might have read in the news today that a man named Michael Richard MacCaull was arrested on Tuesday on charges of fraud. Here is the full story.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080115/forei...scam.html?.v=1
Unfortunately I am one of the victims of this scam. I was not dealing directly with razor fx but rather with an introducing type company called Horizon FX (HFX) that is based here in Vancouver B.C. At this point I have no reason to believe that HFX had anything to do with the fraud and it seems that they were victims as well. This was a managed fund where they did all the trades (Razor FX did). Every week we received statements of the trades they had done in the week and it averaged about 1% per week. All seemed very well with consistent and conservative gains. Most weeks were up and a few were in the negative.
Prior to using this managed fund, I was VERY skeptical. The return was very good and since at that point I did not know too much about forex I thought that it was too good to be true. The owner of HFX is a personal contact who had been doing this for a few years. To make a long story short(er) I ended up giving them my money about 7 months ago. The investment was very liquid in that I was able to withdraw money at any time and ofcourse deposit at any time. Well, in the end I had a significant amount of money invested with them (atleast for me) and I have no idea if I will get anything back. I am usually a skeptical person, but Im just glad that the world is filled with bigger skeptics then I am, who did not follow my suggestion when I told them it is a good investment.
Back in November of last year, for some reason I started feeling very uncomfortable with them having my money since I was afraid of this EXACT scenario. I seriously considered pulling out all my investment, but decided instead to first learn forex on my own. Understand it very well then when the time was right take it out and invest part of it on my own. I should clarify that there were no actual reasons that made me want to take my money out, it was solely a GUT feeling.
Its too late for that now... What is absolutely nuts about this whole thing is that every statement and every trade they had sent us was FAKE. They didnt do any trading... The 0.4% one week, the 2.3% the next were all fake. Quite disturbing really... Further, this a**hole has done this before and I was shocked to find out that in 2002 he served 15 months in prison for a previous securities fraud conviction! How he was able to do this again especially after being on "supervised release" after his jail sentence absolutely baffles me. Did it take the Aston Martin he was driving and not the Masarati he had before that, to get notice from the feds?? Mind you this guy is 36 years old now and in his first scam he was in his mid 20s...
Although this is quite difficult to handle I believe there is something positive (atleast I hope will prove to be) from this experience. Without getting involved with HFX I probably would have not been exposed to forex, atleast not any time soon. I am not discouraged from forex itself, but rather more motivated to learn it and become very good at. Dont need the huge returns, just good and consistent returns.
As for the lessons learned? well thats a tough one. Unfortunately this experience does show that this world (as we all already know ofcourse), is filled with snakes and liars. Who can you really trust anymore? Can all these companies go belly up? Run away with our money? Is there a better way than the current method of handing over our money to some party? Is there ANY protection for us?
Although I knew everything about HFX, it was disclosed that they had another company doing that trading, but the identity of the company and its principles was their secret. From now on, I must know EXACTLY who I am dealing with, all the parties involved. Only go with the Big boys... Not just in terms of the size of their wallet but their name/reputation AND size of their wallet. From now on I will only deal with the "household" names in the industry. It does put a negative light on the whole industry though since until there is some regulation (even with it really) I will always have my doubts about the brokers. In my opinion, the best thing for this industry is if the big banks get involved.
So now Im dealing with this waiting to see what will happen next. I pray that I will get atleast some portion of my investment back. Im wondering if being in Canada will have less priority than other people from the United States.
Im wondering if anyone else on these boards was dealing with any of these two companies. Also anyone with experience in these matters care to give any advice?
Again, I would like to reiterate that at this point it does not seem that HFX was involved in the scam.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080115/forei...scam.html?.v=1
Unfortunately I am one of the victims of this scam. I was not dealing directly with razor fx but rather with an introducing type company called Horizon FX (HFX) that is based here in Vancouver B.C. At this point I have no reason to believe that HFX had anything to do with the fraud and it seems that they were victims as well. This was a managed fund where they did all the trades (Razor FX did). Every week we received statements of the trades they had done in the week and it averaged about 1% per week. All seemed very well with consistent and conservative gains. Most weeks were up and a few were in the negative.
Prior to using this managed fund, I was VERY skeptical. The return was very good and since at that point I did not know too much about forex I thought that it was too good to be true. The owner of HFX is a personal contact who had been doing this for a few years. To make a long story short(er) I ended up giving them my money about 7 months ago. The investment was very liquid in that I was able to withdraw money at any time and ofcourse deposit at any time. Well, in the end I had a significant amount of money invested with them (atleast for me) and I have no idea if I will get anything back. I am usually a skeptical person, but Im just glad that the world is filled with bigger skeptics then I am, who did not follow my suggestion when I told them it is a good investment.
Back in November of last year, for some reason I started feeling very uncomfortable with them having my money since I was afraid of this EXACT scenario. I seriously considered pulling out all my investment, but decided instead to first learn forex on my own. Understand it very well then when the time was right take it out and invest part of it on my own. I should clarify that there were no actual reasons that made me want to take my money out, it was solely a GUT feeling.
Its too late for that now... What is absolutely nuts about this whole thing is that every statement and every trade they had sent us was FAKE. They didnt do any trading... The 0.4% one week, the 2.3% the next were all fake. Quite disturbing really... Further, this a**hole has done this before and I was shocked to find out that in 2002 he served 15 months in prison for a previous securities fraud conviction! How he was able to do this again especially after being on "supervised release" after his jail sentence absolutely baffles me. Did it take the Aston Martin he was driving and not the Masarati he had before that, to get notice from the feds?? Mind you this guy is 36 years old now and in his first scam he was in his mid 20s...
Although this is quite difficult to handle I believe there is something positive (atleast I hope will prove to be) from this experience. Without getting involved with HFX I probably would have not been exposed to forex, atleast not any time soon. I am not discouraged from forex itself, but rather more motivated to learn it and become very good at. Dont need the huge returns, just good and consistent returns.
As for the lessons learned? well thats a tough one. Unfortunately this experience does show that this world (as we all already know ofcourse), is filled with snakes and liars. Who can you really trust anymore? Can all these companies go belly up? Run away with our money? Is there a better way than the current method of handing over our money to some party? Is there ANY protection for us?
Although I knew everything about HFX, it was disclosed that they had another company doing that trading, but the identity of the company and its principles was their secret. From now on, I must know EXACTLY who I am dealing with, all the parties involved. Only go with the Big boys... Not just in terms of the size of their wallet but their name/reputation AND size of their wallet. From now on I will only deal with the "household" names in the industry. It does put a negative light on the whole industry though since until there is some regulation (even with it really) I will always have my doubts about the brokers. In my opinion, the best thing for this industry is if the big banks get involved.
So now Im dealing with this waiting to see what will happen next. I pray that I will get atleast some portion of my investment back. Im wondering if being in Canada will have less priority than other people from the United States.
Im wondering if anyone else on these boards was dealing with any of these two companies. Also anyone with experience in these matters care to give any advice?
Again, I would like to reiterate that at this point it does not seem that HFX was involved in the scam.