(Eqtsad)- A Syrian lady lives in a Gulf country talked to Eqtsad about her experience with one of the Forex companies called “Pandaoption”, which started almost a year and a half ago, when she received a phone call from an American phone number, the speaker talked to her in Arabic introducing their forex company which called “Pandaoption” that works on binary option tool.
“The first impression was positive as the person was professional and systematic in introducing the company and gave me the choice to contact him later in case I agreed on registering with the company” detailed.
The Syrian lady continued that she went to the website of the company (www.pandaoption.com ) and found that the contact address was in London, UK, the company linked to it was called “Kalahouse Limited” the address was: 30 Foxborough Gardens, London, SE4 1HX, the owner was Ukrainian that was mentioned in the registration certificate of the company. All that gave her peace of mind as in England it would be difficult to escape fraud.
The lady contacted Pandaoption’s representative and told him that she had transferred $100 to her account with the them, then another person contacted her as the assigned account manager.
“I made sure from my bank that the transfer by the credit card had gone to England. Moreover, for double check, I asked the account manager to send me an invoice, where the name of the beneficiary was Kalahouse limited with the same address and the bank was Barclays in London. All that was enough for me at the time to trust them or to have a peace of mind that things can be fixed if something went wrong, moreover, to make sure that it was not a fake company and involved in money laundering.”
The victim started trading with $100 at deals of $10 and $20 were done over the phone when she logged on to her account, then the account manager suggested adding $250 to get bonus to enable her trading with it and keep her money protected. After doing so and obtaining the bonus, she made some deals herself, some of them were unsuccessful, then she decided to close her account and leave because she felt it was not her field and there was no need to stress herself while she had good job and income.
That choice of losing an investor was not acceptable for the Pandaoption and the account manager who asked her for the reason behind joining the forex in first place, and when he explained that she was looking for another source of income to use it for charity and helping the needy, he expressed his support for that goal and offered helping her in achieving that. “I was stupid enough to believe that might happen in such an immoral environment”, expressed angrily.
After that, the account manager suggested adding $5000 and got good bonus then deals were done together over the phone while she was logging on to her account.
“Trading and deals went well and profits were good, then when we reached to almost $12000 the account manager suggested topping up the wallet to an amount of $20 thousand to be eligible for monthly protected deals. When I did so, the promise was kept for two months then many excuses were made to escape.”
according to the Syrian lady, everything went well for almost 9 months, then when the money in the wallet reached to almost $70 thousand, the account manger hinted that if the amount reached to $100 thousand, he would do his best to triple it and let her withdraw the money on condition to use it for charity and humanitarian causes, she agreed as that was her main goal.
“In the beginning I was naive enough to think that he would reach to that amount by trading, but he started ignoring the account and cancelling the calls for deals, and then he hinted that I have good salary and I can top up the wallet to $100 thousand quickly, to realise that his practices and ignorance to the account were in purpose to pressurise me to pay more money”, added.
After that she agreed to pay small amount of money ($3000) in the beginning of this year, but the surprise was that the invoice was for a Bank in China called (SHANGHAI PUDONG DEVELOPMENT BANK) and the beneficiary was a company called (SHENZHEN ART ELECTRONICS CO) with many bank accounts connected to it most of them in America, then she notices that the the company linked to pandaoption on the website has changed into (Teracania LTD- Patriarch Evtimii 49, Sofia 1463, Republic of Bulgaria). After that her account was changed into (VIP) even the whole website has changed completely into (www.pandaoptionvip.com) and she not able to log on to her old account.
“I started worrying and felt insecure, I decided to leave the company and withdraw my money, and here the real trouble started, especially when I noticed that a bonus was moved to the new website and its real amount was multiplied by 100, and the mistake was not fixed despite requesting dozens of times, moreover, I requested withdrawal of $20 thousand and it was approved and money taken from my account, but it did not arrived to my bank for 2 weeks, then I was told that I have trading volume of $17000 left, although I was sure that was not true, but I did traded that amount, to be told later that there was mistakes in calculation and the left trading volume was a million and a half.”
The story did not end here according to the victim, as when the $20 thousand were returned to her account they were named as BONUS, meaning that they will not be freed till making deals equal to at least 30 folds that amount of money. In summary, they almost turned all the money in her wallet into BONUS, and kept ignoring her requests to correct the mistakes.
in the end, the account manager demanded me to pay $5000 to free the money and correct errors to enable her to withdraw my money, I first tricked him and told him to forward me an invoice to a bank in England in particular, but the beneficiary was again to the Bank in China, and when I insisted on transferring money to England, he told me that money transfer to England was no longer possible. Then I asked him to put that demand in writing, he refused, then I insisted that I would not pay any cent
Eqtsad contacted the company and the account manager in regard to the points the investor mentioned, but there was no reply (email available).
Another suggestion by the account manager was granted her a credit card with a limit of $5000 on condition that she must pay the same amount in advance, and that credit card would enable her to withdraw her money without a request in advance, but the limit would be $5000 every 24 hours and must be in the same time exactly, according to the account manager’s explanation to her.
But the shock was when the account manager sent her a copy of an investor credit card without concealing any details (full name, 16 digit number, expiry date) to show her how it would look like, and she started worrying that her credit cards and bank account details might be disclosed to a third party without her permission by such reckless members in the company.
“When I refused that suggestion and refused paying money, the account manager asked me to log on to my account, once I did, he made a deal without my permission of the whole amount of money in my wallet and the deal ending in 2018, I contacted the customer support, and rang the UK’s number and the person in New York replied and told me that the financial department demanded me to pay $5000 to stop the deal, I told him that I do not mind keep watching the deal till 2018, but that was not what they expected, then the next day, once again the account manager told me to log on to my account while he was talking to me to fix the mistakes, once I signed in he told me that he stopped the deal because it was not approved by the financial department and I will lose 20% of the whole value of the deal, but when I managed to see the left amount of money it was only 20% of the deal value left, then he told me that he made the deal from my IP address because I was logged on, and it would look for investigators that it was me who stopped the deal.”
Eqtsad started investigating the points mentioned in the story, it was clear that changes were made in the description of financial procedure of the investor by comparing the screenshot of the old account with the new account, moreover, the old website of the company was close completely as when writing (www.pandoption.com), the new website (www.pandaoptionvip.com) opens straightaway indicating that old data were lost and what had happened to our speaker might have happened to hundreds or thousands of investors, and what is shown on the new website is decided by the company only and can change it however it likes.
After logging to the website, funny mistakes were found, for example the word “successful” was written “successfull” when logging in, moreover, the location of the company on google map was a place called “Temple fortune”, and it was a Dry Clean Laundry and the phone number was different from the one put on the company website.
Moreover, the lady told Eqtsad that once the account manager told her that she can transfer money to Saudi Arabia, then Eqtsad suggested asking him to forward her the recipient details, it was a company called “safwat al-Motamysoon for information technology” and it was the company responsible for a website for selling goods over the internet called (CRAZYIA- www.crazyia.com) , Eqtsad contacted the website to explain relation with pandaoption, but there was no reply.
In summary, the following points have been noticed in regard to pandoption: the address presented in field “contact us” was London, UK, and the phone number 00443300270049 which is in the UK, but when dialling it, people in New York reply, and when the same person recalled the investor, the number of New York appears on screen (0019179796970), the owner Kalahouse limited and based in UK, but moved to Bulgaria with different name, money transfer used to go to UK, but changed to China, Saudi Arabia and maybe other countries, money transfer via credit card used to go to UK, but changed to Bulgaria. All these points incites worries and suspicion about the possibility that the company might became fake, has money laundering activities or does so for tax evasion purposes.
In the end, our speaker said that legally she would do all she could to report the points she noticed to different investigation bodies in UK, USA, Bulgaria and Saudi Arabia to investigate in possible money laundering, tax evasion and frauds, and that has become easy as all complaints forms are available online, and can be done within 10 minutes.
“However, personally I am very angry of myself because I was stupid enough to believe that I can find moral and trustworthy people in such immoral cruel place, I had good intensions when I involved in such an experience, but it was badly used, it’s a lesson I must learn, and I will do all my best to warn other investors who I managed to know to take care when they deal with this company,” she ended.
All evidences are available for every single word written in this report, however, Eqtsad gives Pandaoption the right to reply to all the points mentioned in the report.
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