We have already published warning against binary options scams called Citidel, Virtnext and Tauribot. And in discussions under those articles you will find many real testimonials from people who have lost money with these scams.
And one of our readers sent us by e-mail his story with these three systems and it is really interesting, so we are publishing it here in this article as another review and warning.
Real user story
I’ve been playing around with binary options for a very short while now and actually tried to become an active BO trader earlier this week; unfortunately trying to use auto-traders.
After doing (what I thought was) due diligence investigation and following the rave reviews from the “respected” Michael Freeman and binaryoptionwatchdog.com, I signed up to CitidelLTD, VirtNext and TauriBot and found the following.
The first very obvious observation is that they all have the same Web interface for their apps, with the exception of “theme” differences. All the apps have issues with the user’s trading currency (GBP instead of USD in my case), the time displays are gibberish and the dates of trade execution and trade charts are wrong. All the apps auto-assign you to a random broker. After signing up with the broker, all the confirmation emails also look exactly the same. None of them have any kind of getting started guides or live chat sections. Contacting their customer support is also useless, as they refer you to the broker to sort out any kind of app issues. Needless to say, the brokers don’t have an idea what you are talking about or how to fix the issues.
Let’s start with CitidelLTD. The broker in question was Binary Brokerz, whom I have honestly never heard of before. As per normal the account manager haunted me with sales calls to the point of madness, until I paid the minimum $250 deposit obviously. After the account was finally verified and activated, I started trading, auto-trading that is. The first observation was that the app is obviously not an auto-trader as we know in the forex world (MetaTrader 4 auto-traders). Your browser has to be open all the time and if you don’t refresh the page or click the dashboard button again, nothing happens. When the auto-trader starts, it picks a random currency pair and (seemingly to me) tosses a coin on whether to call or put. In most cases it was blatantly obvious looking at the charts that the calls were wrong. Needless to say, I lost 5 of the 8 auto-trades started. And 2 of the ITM’s wre literally by hook and by crook in the dying seconds of the trade. $95.50 down the drain. After contacting CitidelLTD, I was told that I can expect to lose more than 50% trades if I make less than 20 trades, but this should rocket up to the claimed 80%+ with increased trades. Yeah right…
Next came VirtNext. I was auto-assigned to Banc de Binary. This is where it gets interesting. The BdB account manager had no idea about the VirtNext/BdB connection and was basically on his way to start with the usual sales pitches about their own trading signals and 1-on-1 trading sessions. When I stopped him in the middle of his pitch to ask him to please just activate my account so I can start my VirtNext auto-trading, he told me in no uncertain terms that I should take my business elsewhere as he does not wish to do business with someone who trades using robots. That was the end of that… I am now waiting for my BdB account to be verified and hopefully get my deposit back.
But wait, there’s more. The clincher! TauriBot. Again the same process as before, the same Web interface and confirmation emails. This time I was assigned to Option500. This is where the plot thickens. I received the call from the Option500 account manager, a certain Dr Samuel Rasidi. I immediately inquired as to why all 3 apps share the same Web interface. He put me on hold for “someone who can answer your technical question”. I then spoke to an Indian gentleman who explained in broken English what the deal was. According to him, all 3 Websites belong to them, them being Option500. With previous Michael Freeman and WatchDog posts in mind, I proceeded to ask whether they had any connection to BinaryOptionRobot.com. He confirmed this fact and furthermore stated that they have a “monopoly” on binary robots and that they just outsource the client accounts to other randomly picked brokers. A final word on TauriBot is that the institution in question, Chicago University, does not actually exist (according to Google searches etc). The closest I could get was University of Chicago. The similarities in the actual university and the claimed university is obvious, even the color schemes were copied.
All of this I found out within 48 hours…
So my verdict: VirtNext = CitidelLTD = TauriBot = BinaryOptionRobot = Option500. One BIG scam!
I contacted Michael Freeman and WatchDog by email with no reply. The conclusion I came up with was that they (if it’s not actually the same person) were either reluctant to withdraw their rave reviews, or are in on the whole thing.