Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.
P.M. writes: I am enquiring about the Choices Bond, yielding a fixed 7 per cent a year. Have you heard of these people and are they any good?
Avoid: Your Options simply baits the hook, reels you in, then passes you on to someone else
Tony Hetherington replies: The sales pitch you copied to me is hugely misleading. It comes from a company called Your Options Limited, based in Halifax and run by Ashley Parkin-Beacher, and it tells you: ‘There are few opportunities in the current marketplace that match both the returns and the security the Choices Bond offers.’
In what it calls ‘a simple comparison’, the Choices Bond Isa which it is promoting promises 7 per cent interest compared to ‘the average Isa returns from the ten largest high street banks at just 0.25 per cent’.
But this is a false comparison. A Cash Isa with a bank is completely secure, while the scheme offered by Your Options is an Innovative Isa which lends your money to businesses with the risk that they may not be able to repay you.
Your Options claims: ‘We are experts who specialise in the field of financial services.’ It adds: ‘We are whole of market providers for Isas and pensions, with access to a myriad of providers.’
And it reassures clients, saying: ‘We plan an investment strategy to achieve your personal requirements.’
You might think from all this guff that you were dealing with a genuine firm of fully authorised financial advisers, approved by the Financial Conduct Authority. Wrong. Small, faint print explains: ‘Please note, we do not give financial advice.’
Your Options simply baits the hook, reels you in, then passes you on to someone else.
Its advertising reassures investors that FCA-authorised ‘Northern Provident Investments will oversee any investments throughout their duration.’ And NPI ‘have all of the relevant protections and permissions needed to facilitate Isa investments and savings’.
What it fails to spell out is that this does not mean you can claim compensation if the value of your Isa shrinks.
A clearly annoyed NPI boss Paul Crawford told me: ‘We have no involvement with Your Options and have not provided any kind of approval to them. We will be contacting Your Options immediately to demand that they cease the misuse of our name and that they withdraw any promotional collateral that refers to us.’
Your Options and Ashley Parkin-Beacher did not respond to repeated invitations to comment.
Company records describe Your Options as a ‘market research and public opinion polling’ business, with no mention of financial expertise.
It seems likely it works on commission, drumming up business for some middleman, but its claims are too flawed to be trusted. Steer clear.
A voucher from easyJet won’t help me rebook
D.W. writes: In February last year, I booked a package holiday to Rhodes, to celebrate my 80th birthday in September.
After the pandemic hit, easyJet altered our flights two weeks before we were due to travel, which was not acceptable.
They offered a 12-month voucher in place of the £692 I had paid, but I have since found most tour operators, including the one for our Rhodes trip, will not accept the voucher.
Tony Hetherington replies: EasyJet was providing the flights for your package holiday, but accepting a voucher means that in effect you now have to put together your own package deal, booking flights to an easyJet destination and making your own arrangements for hotel accommodation and travel between there and the airport, with no courier. You have told me that at your age, and with health issues, this is an unlikely scenario.
I asked easyJet to reconsider and the airline explained there may have been some confusion as you dealt through a travel agent and not directly with easyJet, which may have been simpler and cheaper. EasyJet has now refunded your £692 in full.
WE’RE WATCHING YOU
Company bosses alleged to be responsible for cheating investors out of many millions of pounds are facing fraud charges following a lengthy international investigation.
Spot Option, owned by Israeli businessmen Pini Peter and Ran Amiran, is said to have been behind a worldwide network of scam firms that marketed binary options as investments.
Peter, who was convicted of fraud, forgery and money laundering in Israel in 2005, later became a prominent businessman and charity patron, with links to the country’s government which gave Spot Option grants of over £200,000 to expand abroad.
Links: Pini Peter, right, with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu
Spot Option’s investments, dressed up to look like genuine trading in shares, currencies and commodities, were actually a spin of a coin. If the value of the investment rose above a certain point, the investor won, but if it fell, the investor lost everything. And the coin was allegedly rigged to spin in favour of the binary options firms that marketed the scam, according to court filings.
Spot Option, based in Ramat Gan in Israel, licensed firms to use its scheme, training them in how to operate under their own names, giving the appearance of genuine investment businesses. One of the biggest of those businesses was Banc de Binary, which cheated British investors out of tens of millions of pounds.
The Mail on Sunday repeatedly warned against Banc de Binary, starting soon after it began targeting British victims in 2013.
We exposed the company’s claim to be based in London offices as false. Its only real representative in Britain was Mattison PR, a London public relations firm that issued a stream of false claims on behalf of the Israeli cheats.
The bad news for victims is that the fraud charges against Spot Option, which showed Banc de Binary how to run the scam, are not being brought in Britain, but in the US by its financial watchdog, the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Last Monday, the SEC unveiled court documents alleging that Spot Option showed its offshoots such as Banc de Binary how to raise obstacles preventing investors from withdrawing their money. Spot Option is said to have assured its offshoots that the average investor would lose 80 per cent of their money within five months, producing huge profits for the cheats.
In contrast to the SEC, which succeeded in forcing Banc de Binary out of America, our own Financial Conduct Authority assisted the cheats. It included Banc de Binary on its public register of authorised investment firms. In 2014, it told me it was compelled to do this because the company was licensed by the Cypriot regulator, and an EU directive meant the Cyprus licence had to be respected.
In 2020, it admitted this was wrong. The FCA did have the power to kick Banc de Binary off its register, but by then, trusting the FCA, British victims had lost millions of pounds.
The SEC has asked a court in Nevada to order Spot Option to refund investors, with added interest. If the court grants the order, the beneficiaries will be American investors.
No similar action has been taken in Britain against Spot Option, Banc de Binary, or any of the companies’ bosses.
If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
