Victory! Risky trading sites that scam savers are banned

FIRMS have been banned from luring customers into risking life savings on financial bets known as binary options.

In a victory for Money Mail, new Europewide rules will bar companies from flogging the deals to savers in the UK.

We exposed how people with little or no investing experience lost thousands of pounds from this type of activity.

The City of London Police say binary trading is one of the biggest UK fraud risks. It allows investors to bet on whether shares, currencies or commodities such as oil or gold will rise or fall over a certain period of time — often as little as a few seconds. Trading like this is highly risky: if the bet comes in, you may win big, but if it goes down, you may lose everything.

Often, customers forge a relationship with a personal broker, who will place bets for them. In many cases seen by Money Mail, savers have struggled to get their money back after they’ve handed it over.

Many say they were cajoled into investing much more than they had wanted.

The European Union ban is set to come into force over the next few months.