On my LinkedIn feed, there was a trader called Anthony Rizal who looked liked he was managing a successful forex fund. He was using a broker called Accent Forex and through a structure called a PAMM, was able to allow investors to take part in his success.
The tracker on Myfxbook showed an extremely impressive equity curve
Over 21,000% return!!
70% winning trades and an impressive 2.43 profit factor.
People were gushing at this and you can see that more than $8 million USD was deposited into this account which mostly you would have expected would be investors.
However, pretty much overnight, this account crashed losing everything in it.
A lot of people lost a lot of money with this... the question is, did Tony get over confident with the success he was having and make some massive bets which went wrong? On his website, he states a maximum risk of 5% per trade so how did he manage to lose so much so quickly? Or is it something more sinister with the broker - AccentForex?
Anyway, I thought I'd dig in a bit further..
Firstly looking at the trader himself, Tony, there's a picture of him... his full name, according to the website is Tony Rizal and he hails from Canada.
It is a rather small picture but that's all it is. I've run a few reverse image searches but they don't come up with anything. He's also removed his LinkedIn account. However, what is interesting is if you search for his name 'Anthony Rizal' or 'Tony Rizal', you'll find it a very popular Indonesian name. In fact, search for his name in Facebook and the top searches are all Indonesian profiles - in fact, the first 5 or so pages are all Indonesian profiles. No one remotely looks like Tony in the picture. Of course, this may not mean anything but AccentForex are run from a country called Vanuatu which is close to Indonesia.
So does Tony Rizal actually exist as his picture represents or as some websites are saying, there is no Tony, only a made up person from the broker who are running a not so honest operation.
The fund apparently has been running for 5 years, the first trade opening on the 3rd November 2015 starting with 1 lot size and his most recent trades at 1000 lot sizes. 1000 lot size is massive and if he's trading GBPUSD, that's a 100 million GBP position.. is this really possible for a retail trader?
So accordingly to Tony, the reason why is all went pear shaped is a couple of things. He said he got ill... flu like (perhaps Coronavirus).. but he was trading and didn't get stop losses. When he started losing he entered the market multiple times and was waiting for the rebound.. unfortunately it didnt before margin call was triggered and trades closed in massive loss
That's $9.6 million lost from 7 trades where he was shorting GBPJPY. Considering that there were over 400 trades over 5 years on this portfolio.. to lose it on 7 trades is a mother-of-all mistakes. That is a lot of investors money gone... gone to the broker?
This way of trading is how martingale systems work.. keep betting larger each time you make a mistake with the hope that markets will turn and then you end up in profit or at least covering the losses of your previous trades. But when you lose, you will lose everything.
Another thing which I find interesting in the below percentage gains.
Such a massive gain in performance, over 21,000% return over the portfolio but in terms of real money, it only translated to a 69% return. That is quite a difference! I don't know what to make of it except that money kept coming in and going out of the account.
Now AccentForex have been around for at least 5 years so quite a bit of time. They are an offshore broker and they say that they are registered and regulated by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission with a license number of 17926. However, you've got to remember that Vanuatu is a small country with just 300,000 people on it. It's regulation is not likely going to be as extensive and strict like the UK's FCA. I went onto the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission website and there is a search.. I searched for Accent Forex under Accent, Accent Forex and also under their license number and this is what I saw...
No results found, Vanuatu Financial Services Commission don't seem to have them registered under them.
The internet forums have gone crazy.. on one hand people are really sympathetic to Tony for his mistake after an amazing 5 year winning streak. Reading on the forums, there seem to be quite a few people who have made money with Tony.. they were regularly withdrawing their money (this may explain some of the differences in the percentage gains I mentioned above but only some..). There are many others are calling this a scam and a fraud from the broker. There is no Tony, just an unsavoury offshore broker luring people in to invest in this the system and triggering a fake crash and pocketing the money. Apparently there have been two such cases with this broker previously... both accounts growing consistently over a long period of time and crashing spectacularly in a couple of days.. losing millions for the investors.
One thing I'd like to trace the IP address of any emails that Tony has sent out from his email address... do they actually originate from Canada? Or near Indonesia? You can use something like https://whatismyipaddress.com/ which can tell you where the IP is located. I know people use VPNs these days so this check is not all always conclusive but would be interested for anyone to check this who has received emails from Tony.
So what do you think? Mistake or Fraud?
References
Tony's strategy on AccentForex - https://my.accentforex.com/pammDetailInfo/305327?setLng=en
Forum on Tony's strategy on Myfxbook - https://www.myfxbook.com/community/trading-systems/anthony-wins/1670774,54