Trader’s Tales – The Broker that Saved my Day
Hawksworth the Crook
The next story happened quite a while ago with a British client, a certain something Hawksworth (don’t remember his first name). This guy tried depositing over night 2k gbp, a respectable amount of money for a trader to start with. His account was sent to me, and I was in charge of calling him, helping him with the deposit that didn’t go through, and obviously, convincing him that depositing more will only give him better chances of success and higher profits. After not reaching him all day long, he finally answered his phone at night time, and easily agreed with me that a premium account that costs 5k gbp plus its benefits is definitely the right choice for him and what suits him best. We tried at first the visa, deposit failed. We tried the MasterCard, deposit failed. We tried a second visa, then a 3rd. then a 2nd MasterCard, then a 4th visa… Seize card my computer said. hahaha just because it happens sometimes it doesn’t always mean it’s serious. As a salesperson, the only thing I really care about right now is the deposit, I just want the guy to the deposit, then teach him how to learn. Whether he has money in his accounts or not, I don’t know, but that’s what we have Binary Options don’t we? To take the money out of our accounts and leverage it with binary options trading! After the 5th try, it actually got weird. I wasn’t sure anymore whether the guy is completely broke or is it actually some sort of a scam… Unsure, I rushed in to my boss’s offices.
Could it be a Scam?
I’ve held the call on mute (so he couldn’t hear me whilst he was reading out the numbers from another credit card) and called my manager, “listen jack” “I’ll cut my nuts off if this guy is not trying to deposit with stolen credit cards, he’s got a whole collection.. What do I do?” jack looks at his watch, looks back at me with the same careless stare and says “pass me the phone” without Hawksworth noticing, I passed the call to jack “hello sir? Sir? hi my name is Jack Rumley from the fraud department, I just got a call from Visa and…” that was it, Hawksworth had cut the conversation (or maybe his battery died ;)), and wasn’t reachable anymore. That was it for the day, we all left the office and forgot all about the case before we even got home. Only a few weeks later I ran into Hawksworth account by mistake, obviously he was black listed and account was frozen. Its actually quiet common apparently, pickpockets and other thieves think they can deposit money from one card and withdraw it with and other, simple eh? Well folks, this was one of the first issues trading platforms knew they would have to deal with and that’s why when making a withdraw; the client needs to send personal identification copies for verification.
A Lesson to be Told
Unfortunately reality shows us that few platforms don’t bother checking sources of the money when red flags appear, and let anyone deposit and actually take part in helping “suspected” clients surpassing barriers that can prevent this method of fraud. If your account manager asks you info proving you are the cardholder, and explains you about docs you need to gather for withdraw, most of the chances you are in good hand.