It's a giant international scam

Brits are losing millions to UK’s biggest con while the government stands by.

- Abigail Fielding-Smith and Jack Serle

THOUSANDS OF BRITISH PEOPLE HAVE lost millions of pounds to an international scheme sold as an investment opportunity which, in reality, is a wild gamble if not an outright scam. Many countries have outlawed these operations. However, in the UK, a regulatory loophole has left victims completely unprotected – despite police saying it is now the biggest fraud in Britain. South African victims are similarly unprotected.

The sale of what is known as binary options involves betting on whether financial assets such as shares, currencies or commodities will rise or fall over a specific period. Even when the bets are legitimately placed, it’s a hugely risky enterprise – but for many companies binary options primarily act as a vehicle for scamming people.

Victims are targeted by salespeople in call centres abroad – typically located in Israel and Romania – who use high-pressure tactics to convince them to invest. They are then led to believe that their investment is growing as bets are placed – but when they try to cash in their purported returns, they are unable to do so.

The Bureau for Investigative Journalism, London, spoke to dozens of people across the UK who had been targeted by a range of different companies; many had had their credit cards debited without consent – in some cases, to the tune of thousands of pounds.

There are hundreds of binary options companies around the world, making billions of pounds a year. A whistleblower working in Israel told the Bureau that everyone in his call centre was aware they were operating a fraud, and said salesmen were urged by bosses to “rape the clients” financially.