According to media reports, investments made on so-called online “get rich quick” scams have cost UK citizens a lot of money, with its amount rising by 400,000% in a period of six years.
Action Fraud showed figures, according to which the amount of money lost by local customers to binary options trading rose to the mind-blowing £27 million in 2017 alone, in comparison only to £6,200 lost in 2012. The total amount lost by British customers on binary options trading over the past six years rose to £61 million.
Binary Options Betting
Currently, binary options are also known as fixed odds betting, which is becoming more and more popular among UK citizens. Binary options provide local customers with the chance to wager on a possible outcome, and customers payment being a fixed amount, and sometimes even equaling nothing.
In addition, binary options offer customers the chance to usually gamble or something would go up or down, for example whether the price of gold would be higher or lower than a certain value. Also, most people who invest in such binary options trading activities think they could generate a lot of money on betting on small amounts.
The thing is that such betting options are being used by people who commit frauds, especially in business dealings, mostly due to the fact that binary options betting is currently part of a industry which market share is estimated to billions of pounds, which however, has been considered related to foreign criminals.
For the time being, binary options trading is regulated in the country by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), but that is to change soon. The financial regulatory body in the UK, called the Financial Conduct Authority, is to take over the control, monitoring and regulation of this type of betting. Other countries, on the other hand, such as Canada, have fully banned binary options trading.
Online “Get Rich Quick” Scams
As reported by Sky News, binary options betting schemes have been described as scams by the consumer group Which?, with the latter calling such schemes the largest investment frauds in the UK. The consumer group in question has claimed that illegal companies target British customers, trying to lure them into such type of betting through so-called cold-calling methods or pop-up commercials on the Internet.
Binary options trading first appeared as an investment opportunity about a decade ago. Since then, and especially over the last few years, the industry has expanded more rapidly.
As reported by Sky News, local people were being lured into such frauds on a daily basis, according to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau‘s Detective Sergeant Alex Eristavi. Eristavi shared that there was no certain type of victim, with the age of people who get defrauded by online “get rich quick” schemes varying from 19 to 93. Yet, the average age of people involved in such betting is about 50.
Unfortunately, concerns that more students and younger people as a whole get involved in such scams and fall victims to fraudulent companies are constantly rising. Local police have already warned British customers to avoid getting involved in schemes they are not well-acquainted with and raised a red flag that many rogue companies are being operating in the local market.
- Author
Daniel Williams
