Ask any consumer fraud protection agency anywhere in the world what the leading online scam industry is today and they’ll tell you it’s phony binary options brokerages. While there indeed are legitimate binary options trading services, the fake ones out there are many and quite audacious.
A binary option is one in which a guess (or more accurately, a gamble) that a certain stock or commodity will go up or down at a specific time set in advance. Hence the term “binary,” meaning it can only go one of two ways. In either event, the odds are that you’ll lose because, just like in Las Vegas, it’s virtually impossible to bet against the house all the time and win.
The phony binary options sites, however, will entice you with:
- Promises of winning a whopping profit in a relatively short period of time
- Their mesmerizing state-of-the-art site that is, in reality, nothing more than a video game
You sign up and then “deposit” a sum of money using your credit card.
To show you their appreciation, they may give you a bonus to add to your initial investment. They’ll rig the system so you’ll start to see profits immediately. You’re hooked. They’ll ask for an additional investment on your part, and you’ll probably agree, having seen how much your first one has grown. And then somewhere down the line, when you decide to withdraw your funds, one or all of the following will occur:
- You’ll be told that you’re required to deposit an even larger amount of money before you can withdraw anything
- You’ll see that all of a sudden you’ve lost everything
- Your sales representative will stop communicating or you may be told he’s left the firm
- The worst case scenario − the firm itself will disappear into thin air
So what do you do?
Complain to the police and you’ll become just another statistic. Complain to the bank that issued you your credit card and they’ll tell you that you can’t be refunded for a bad investment. Go prove this wasn’t.
If you can’t, then a company called MyChargeBack can. They’re one of the leading global facilitators of fund recovery from online scams.
MyChargeBack provides its clients with the strategies they need to convince banks that Visa and MasterCard regulations require they process requests to reverse these sorts of service-oriented authorized transactions. They prepare an extensive brief for each client to provide to his bank that cogently argues that the transactions should be reversed and a chargeback approved by citing the rules and conditions of the credit card company itself. Should it be required, MyChargeBack’s fund recovery experts will conference call with the bank in order to further explain the process alongside you.
The entire chargeback process can continue for a few months, and MyChargeBack accompanies its clients from start to finish.
If you’ve been scammed, they’re the people to consult.
With over 20 years experience in the heart of the investment industry, Ben Myers has become one of the most respected commentators in the financial world. Having worked for global institutions such as HSBC and Bank of Ireland, Ben ran his own successful investment company in the UK before becoming a chief analyst at ECMarkets and now YesOption. Ben remains a keen forex, stocks and crypto trader and is a regularly featured analyst for a number of online news portals including bbc.com, investing.com,