Beware! 24primeoption is an offshore broker! Your investment may be at risk.
RECOMMENDED FOREX BROKERS
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Open trading accounts with at least two brokers.
24primeoption is a company that offers trading in Forex, Binary Options, ETFs, Stocks, Commodities, Indices and Cryptocurrencies. They advertise four types of accounts with different minimum deposit amounts and declared Return on Investment (ROI) – Bronze, Silver, Gold and Ultimate:
The registration form asks for personal information, such First and Last names, Email address, Phone number, Address and gives the option to select multiple Account types based on the trading instruments – Forex, Binary and Bitcoin. We registered successfully which took us to a client area, and we received an email confirmation.
So far so good. Scrolling down on the home page triggered alarms. At first, we see promises of “45% profit on your initial capital investment monthly,” followed by purported customer testimonials about trading with ease and consistent results. It is the footer, however, which is the cherry on top:
Both addresses here are incorrect. Zip code 75069 is not in New York state, but in Texas, while the Michigan address does not have a Zip code, and there is no such street address in Southfield, MI. This is a huge red flag that raises concerns about the company’s authenticity.
24primeoption regulation & safety of funds
On the broker’s website we find a “Trade Certification” allegedly by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
This is another false claim, since the organization’s registration database is public, and a quick search for such entity on their internet site returned no results. What’s more, we found out that on July 7, 2020 CySEC has actually flagged the website as an unregulated broker:
The Terms and Conditions start with another bold, but quite vague proclamation: “The trade name is owned and operated under regulated authority.” There is no indication what this authority is and what are its regulations. Further down, however, we see something about a Gambling Supervision Commission license and understand that the skill-based games and real money tournaments which are won or lost based on the customer’s ability to predict movement in price of a stock, commodity, currency or index, are commonly known as binary options trading.
In the Privacy Policy page there is another allegation – “24primeoption is regulated by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of Mauritius” and “24primeoption is licensed to offer trading with Forex and CFD products, among other instruments and securities.” This also turned out to be bogus as there were no records found of such entity in the FSC database.
From all this we conclude that this “broker”, is not regulated or licensed for Forex trading. It is actually a sort of gambling platform, which does not provide any security to traders’ funds.
24primeoption Trading Conditions and Software
Despite the announced “automated platform for online binary options”, we could not find any trading platform or software available on 24primeoption’s website. The client area also does not indicate how you can actually trade once you have created an account, and we could not find anything about the advertised “games of skill” too.
The entire website does not contain a single mention of leverage or spread that the broker offers to its investors. We believe this is a 100% scam operation that baits potential customers to deposit funds with false promises, while not providing any services after that. As such, we advise our readers to stay as far away as possible from 24primeoption.
24primeoption Deposit/Withdrawal Methods And Fees
In the footer we see a number of payment method logos, including Skrill, Neteller, Western Union, MoneyGram and Bitcoin. The Terms and Conditions state that when “a customer maintains an account by means of credit/debit card deposits, earnings payouts or withdrawals are only paid back to the same card.” However, in the client area there were only 2 funding methods available – Bitcoin and money transfer via Western Union and MoneyGram. Perfect Money, whose logo we see on the screenshot below, is another money transfer option, but when we accessed the Order Payment details page, it was not available in the drop down.
We have to warn our readers that unlike credit cards, where you can file for a chargeback with your financial institution, Bitcoin and Money Transfer deposits are anonymous and there is no option for chargeback filing. For this reason, we advise not to make any deposits with this brokerage!
The Withdrawal page has more methods available – in addition to the Bitcoin and money transfer options, there is PayPal and Bank Deposit. Considering that withdrawals can only be made to the same payment method that was used to deposit, however, it is not clear how these options can be utilised.
There are other alarming clauses in the Terms and Conditions – “The Company may impose trade volume and other limits on Customer accounts at its sole discretion.” The trade volume limit upon account opening is USD/GBP/EUR 25,000/day maximum trading volume, while the maximum account size (i.e. cash balance) is USD/GBP/EUR 30,000. If a customer’s account balance exceeds the maximum account size, then withdrawals must be made to bring the balance to within the limits. They do not say, however, what will happen if withdrawals are not made.
The inactivity clause states that customer accounts which have zero funds in them and are not used for a period of 12 consecutive months shall be closed. If there are funds in your account and you do not play any game or place any trade on the site for a period of 36 consecutive months, there is a monthly management fee of USD/GBP/EUR 30 until the account is used for trading or the funds are withdrawn.
To sum up we conclude that 24primeoption is not only an unregulated broker, but they do not even offer any trading at all. Rather, it is some kind of scam gambling operation, and we do not recommend investing with them.
How does the scam work?
Users often fall prey of very simple but quite efficient scams. The first snare is usually an internet ad promising big profits over a short period of time, and all you need to do is provide your personal information, usually email address and phone number. If you do that, you will start getting calls from scam brokers who will continue with the pitches of quick and easy profits until you decide to make a first deposit of $200 to $300. On these funds the scammers get a fat commission and transfer you to senior “brokers”.
These expert con-artists are smooth talkers who start talking you into putting even more money in, because “now is the perfect moment” or “the more money you invest, the higher your profits will be”. Usually about this time most traders will start to feel the scam and will want to withdrawal their money and get out fast.
Unfortunately, the scammers will not give in easily. First, they will try to persuade you not to withdraw right now because you will miss on “big profits”, and if that does not work, they will find numerous reasons to deny or delay your request by asking you for additional documents or claiming that there are some other causes for not executing the withdrawal. The ultimate objective in such procrastination is to make the traders miss the crucial period in which a chargeback request can be filed, and thus lose the chance of getting their money back.
What to do if scammed?
If you used a credit card to make a deposit with the scammers you should immediately file for a chargeback. Both VISA and MasterCard have increased the time in which you can file to 540 days, in part specifically to fight such online scams.
If you used bitcoin or some other untraceable source, however, chances of recovering your funds are slim. You might get approached by so-called “recovery agents”, but don’t fall for their tricks. They will ask for payment up-front to recover your money, but this is just another scam and you will not get anything back.
