WINNIPEG - The Manitoba Securities Commission is warning about a new scam.
The commission says in the last six months it has issued 15 alerts and opened 29 investigations and estimates losses for Manitoba victims at least $500,000.
Commission spokesman Jason Roy says it's known as the binary options scam.
He says a binary option is a sort of wager on the future value of a currency or an asset like a stock, and if you guess right you get paid, but not in this scheme — all the money is taken by the scammers.
An 81-year-old Winnipeg woman is now on social assistance because she was conned into investing $250 with the promise of high returns.
The woman's husband had recently died and she was stressed out and at a "really low ebb in my life."
"And then it went from there, then it was $700 dollars, then it was $800 dollars, and it kept just going like that," said the woman, who doesn't want to be identified.
The scammers took her for $20,000, from a bank draft and her credit cards. It wiped out her savings.
"I started to cry and I cried for days and days and nights and nights and I couldn’t sleep and I couldn't eat."
Roy says the amount scammers have stolen in this fraud is likely in the millions of dollars because of unreported cases.
"They're frauds, they're con men, they're very good at it ... it's Canada's biggest investment fraud going on right now," said Roy.
He urges people to come forward to get the word out and prevent this from happening to someone else.
The securities commission says no legitimate company is allowed to deal in binary options investments in Canada and cannot contact you.
(CTV Winnipeg)
No comments:
Post a Comment