5 Months – Update on EFRI Campaigns and Status Report

In January 2019, with the arrest of Uwe Lenhoff, founder of Option888 we started our first EFRI-campaign. In February with the arrest of Gal Barak, we launched to campaign for recover funds from XTraderFX & Safemarkets. Later we started Blue Trading, AlgoTechs/BeAlgo, StoxMarket & KayaFX. Over the last 5 months, more than 800 people have by registered with these EFRI campaigns.

Closed scams and exposed criminal networks

We are convinced that EFRI information and contributions have been instrumental in closing large broker scams such as Option888, XTraderFX or SafeMarkets. They are currently being investigated by authorities in various jurisdictions. We were only able to do this with the help of whistleblowers and the victims of these schemes, i.e. with our EFRI members. We have only seen the beginning in this respect and are confident that the authorities and courts will take further action in the coming months.

Power of Attorney for action

Of the 800 people up to today, 566 people have granted EFRI a Power of Attorney to authorize EFRI to ask for the refund of their stolen money (deposits made). The exact numbers on POAs and funds recovery volume are:

Fraud, lies, frustration, and shame

All the victims are telling us the same sad story. It’s a story about reckless boiler room agents that defrauded them on a constant basis and with lies and fake news. Not only that the victims have been devastated about the loss of their life savings. In addition, the victims feel ashamed and are frustrated and depressed. They just lost trust in everything and everybody.

No support, no cooperation

All the victims are telling us that banks deny cooperation, authorities feel not responsible for fraudulent brokers and illegitimate PSPs, and prosecutors even do not start investigations.

The EFRI team around Elfi, therefore, communicates intensively with the victims but also with the police, prosecutors, and authorities in various jurisdictions to raise awareness of the gigantic fraud that has cost retail investors in the EU billions of Euros. It’s a difficult road, but the stones will finally start rolling.
Our team tries its best to educate the victims and give them the feeling that they are not alone.

Let’s become louder

We are convinced that things have to be changed drastically. We need to make a difference by publicly raising the voice of so many victims. EFRI´s next step is to expose and approach all service providers involved in the different schemes on behalf of our victims authorized by the POAs.

For each one of these service providers and its managers and beneficial owners we will undertake a collective action by filing appropriate money laundering complaints and fraud complaints with the competent authorities (prosecutors, Ombudsman, regulatory authorities, FBI, SEC, offices for consumer protection and so on) with the final target to get the stolen money refunded to our victims.

We will keep you posted here on Fintelegram on our EFRI progress.