The Financial Services Commission (FSC), the Mauritian regulator, announced this Wednesday that an employee of binary options firm 247 Options Trade is using a fake investor-dealer license. Lilly Pearson, if that is even a real name, claims that the FSC issued her the license in 2012.
This isn’t the first time that 247 Options Trade has been in trouble with the Mauritian regulator. In December of 2017, the FSC issued a statement warning investors not to trade with the binary options broker.
Lilly Pearson's fake FSC license in all its glory
As with Lilly Pearson, the firm had falsely claimed that it had been issued with an investment dealer license by the FSC. The regulator’s warning noted that it had never issued such a license to the firm and, in fact, had never issued any license, of any kind, to the binary options broker.
247 Options Trade - a history of lies
Many binary options dealers have been attempting to scam people for years now. Finance Magnates wrote a report three years ago covering a warning list issued by the French authorities that contained 247 different firms.
Like those firms, 247 Options Trade's website presents an array of misleading or false information. For instance, the firm claimed that it was regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC ), though it very obviously wasn’t.
As with many other dodgy binary options and Forex brokers, the company also listed a fake address in New York. Alongside this was a landline number, purportedly for contacting their New York office, that was based in California.
Users of the site have reported that they cannot withdraw funds. Again, this is a common feature of scam artists who run forex and binary options brokerage firms.
Overall, all indications are that this is not a firm that anyone in their right mind should trade with. No legitimate business withholds deposits and lies about its regulatory licensing. Stay away kids.
