Half my money vanishes in a murky tangle of ‘binary options’
P.B. writes: I opened an account with a ‘binary options’ trading website called NRGbinary.com. I deposited £2,700 and was introduced to an adviser, Karen Miller. After a few weeks my account was up to £3,400. Then I had a health scare and my doctor advised me to slow down.
Karen transferred my money to a managed account operated by NRG itself, though I had to deposit a further £2,000. Oliver Martins from NRG then asked for more money. I declined but found that £1,500 had been taken from my bank account. I complained and NRG returned it. I could not trust the company though, so I asked for the rest of my money. NRG did nothing and I found that after I had asked for the withdrawal, more than half my money had been lost. Now NRG just ignores me and it still has my money. EVEN finding out for certain who you have been dealing with has proved almost impossible. There is a close link to a London company that is itself breaking the law, but there is no British company called NRGbinary and various options trading websites name three different businesses as being behind NRG.
One mention says it is operated by an offshore company called NRG Capital (Cyprus) Limited. However, the financial watchdog on the island has not licensed it and has actually issued a public warning against it.
Paperwork you were sent shows that NRG is run by Alfa Media Group Limited. There are unconnected British businesses with similar names, but no exact match, so there is nothing to show where NRG’s Alfa might be based. NRG is not part of any similarly named British company, but its website did say until quite recently that it was operated by MHGG Tech Solutions Limited. The website has now been altered slightly to say that MHGG collects payments from investors – but close ties clearly remain.
And this is bad news. MHGG is not really at the address it gives in north-west London. Offices there belong to a business centre that accepts mail for anyone who pays.
More seriously, MHGG was set up only on July 2 last year and on July 3 its sole director quit. He was Anous Kostikian, described as a ‘Greek entrepreneur’ aged 22 and living in Cyprus.
His resignation was not even notified to Companies House until a month or so ago. Anyone sending money to MHGG over the past nine months would have been unaware that it had no director, which is illegal, and that it was not at its registered address.
Companies House told me on Thursday: ‘We are taking action to remove the company from the register as there is no director.’ Yet NRG’s website claims that MHGG is ‘an internationally renowned private trading and investment company’ with ‘long standing performance ratings’.
This goes beyond simple advertising hype. It is lies, and that makes it a criminal offence under the Fraud Act. Inform the police, and if they would like the information I have turned up, that’s absolutely fine. Meanwhile, nobody should touch NRGbinary, not even with a bargepole dipped in disinfectant.