27 May AtoZForex, Vilnius — For a long time, a large number of unauthorized brokerage firms have been targeting Romanian residents. Considering that the Romanian officials have received numerous of complaints from the public about these brokers, who work through call centers. In response to the complaints, various of unregistered and fake Forex brokers were hit by the Romanian police over recently. Considering, the Romanian Police raided unregulated broker offices.
The case started off with the increase of complaints from Romanian investors to the authorities. A large number of false advertisements and solicitations have been made to Romanian investors. People claimed that after being contacted and misled, they did not have any funds remained on their accounts.
List of suspects and brokers was not disclosed
According to the investigation, the unregulated and fake brokerages were using a very aggressive method of soliciting Romanian residents. They have been promoting their services as very profitable and reliable while convincing the investors to deposit large sums of money. The majority of the clients money were transferred to Bulgaria, Cyprus and Israel. The Romanian Police reported that some of these funds were used for criminal activities.
The common technique used by sales representatives of the unauthorized and fake brokerage was through cold calling their clients. They started out with offering false promotions and services, while promising large returns. Once the clients were ‘hooked’, they were given financial advice from the brokers, which usually lead them to bankruptcy. Due to these findings and the scope of the scheme, the Romanian Police raided unregulated broker offices. However, the list of unauthorised and fake brokerages was not disclosed by the Romanian Police.
The initiative of the French financial regulator
Lately, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), French financial regulatory agency, has issued its annual report for 2015. The report highlighted that since 2009 false forex and binary options brokerages have solicited almost €4 billion from French investors.
French officials have been actively encouraging other European countries to pay closer attention to unauthorized brokerage firms. The AMF also have been influencing the European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) in order for to pressure the Cypriot regulator (CySEC) into having more attentive policies towards unregulated brokerages.
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