A broker operating from an office in Dubai has taken millions of dirhams from UAE clients and vanished.
The broker operated an entity in the Gulf city state called Gulf First Commercial Brokers and worked from Capital Golden Tower, according to local outlet the Khaleej Times.
However, the actual entity providing the brokerage services was called Sigma-One Capital, which is registered in St Lucia. There is currently no regulatory regime governing the CFD industry in St Lucia, meaning the firm was effectively unregulated.
Sigma-One Capital purports to have an office in the Musalla Towers in Dubai but this appears to be a false claim.
The broker was operating using the MetaTrader platform and offered clients access to three different account types, with varying leverage and minimum deposits.
What did Sigma-Capital One do to clients?
Reporting by the Khaleej Times suggests that Sigma-Capital was targeting Indian clients who are based in the United Arab Emirates.
The broker apparently had around 40 ‘sales’ executives working from its Dubai office, who would speak to clients in local languages, like the South Indian Kannada language.
The playbook will be familiar to anyone who has read about online scams before. Clients were told to deposit small amounts, given guaranteed returns, and then shown an ostensibly increasing account size.
When it actually came time to withdraw funds, clients were shut out and stopped receiving any communications from the firm. The executives apparently ‘abandoned’ their office in a hurry, which is not so surprising.
Are offshore brokers at risk in the UAE?
Clearly scams like this are not representative of what most firms are doing.
However, they do give the sector a bad name and TradeInformer understands there have been more reports and concerns about brokers that have an operational base in Dubai, but which have no local licensing.
Although this is yet to materialise into something more serious, incidents like this are only going to increase the risk that there is an industry clampdown.
