17.000 Refcofx retail clients are more and more active these days in an attempt to get their deposits back. They are contacting news outlets, TV programs , members of the congress..... Turns out this is not a Refco issue any more, it's rather Refco USA issue. Refco clients in some other countries (Canada, India) were able to save their deposits. The only rotten one is Refco America, the largerst independent broker in the richest country in the world. Here is a typical letter addressed to the press: "I am writing this letter in regards to Refcofx situation. As you are aware, the big creditors (such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo) are attempting to steal the money from us small retail clients at Refcofx. I live in Canada and chose to open my forex account with American branch of Refco 4 years ago, although I had a choice of Refco Canada as well. I thought USA was the safest place to invest the money, you can see how wrong I was. Refco Canada clients haven't lost a penny of their deposits, the same at Refco India, they all got their money back, and Refco USA of all is on the way to ruin 17.000 small retail clients from all over the world, many of them with life savings invested there. This kind of outcome is very surprising to me and American Government should do everything in their power to insure that all client deposits are safe and returned to their rightful owners. Refco was your largest independent broker and this outcome is very bad for your country's image. I know, if I don't get my funds back, this would be the last dollar ever invested or in any way sent to the USA". Sincerely
Also, I was expecting more support from our fellow traders from all over the world and especially here in the States. Insted, poor Refcofx clients were spammed by other brokers (vultures) to switch with them, although there was nothing to switch, the money was frozen from October. I know that ET is visited by some of the best and brightest traders and officals in our industry and they could help get the word out about these people's catastrophy. Please don't just turn your head the other way and try to forget this. Today it's refco, and tomorrow could be any of your brokers. I think we should help each other.
I suspect that it's a lot less than 17,000 retail clients. The number is 17,000 accounts, I had 2 accounts with the same login and username and my guess is that 50% of RefcoFX customers did also. So I think it might be about 11,000 retail clients. I'm from Canada, and even though I had to fill out extra paperwork and fax my Canadian passport to RefcoFX, my funds were deposited into a USA RefcoFX account. So my RefcoFX account is frozen, but they will let me trade it and all gains after October 17 might not be honored. This could go on as long as the Enron case.
Forgive me for not knowing a great deal about this scandal, but is there a process in progres/pending to get the money back to the clients? How can they NOT give back the money? Thanks, and I wish you all good luck. -Kastro
The IPO one month before the bankruptcy, I wonder what Bennett was thinking at this time? RefcoFX Chairman President & CEO Phillip R. Bennett rings the opening bell on September 9, 2005.
Kastro, Yes there was a deal signed by Refcofx and FXCM. FXCM wanted to by back 30% of refco's stake in fxcm and to absorb 17.000 accounts with client's balances intact. The judge even aproved the auction date. FXCM won auction as only bidder. After that, the creditors (Bank of America, Wells Fargo and similar trillioners and billioners) objected and forced judge to cancel his previous decision. These creditors want to erase us from the face of the earth and steal our money, because they are stronger, have thousands of lawyers if neccessary and so on. I hope you get the picture. But we are trying to fight them and not let them get away with it. For now our group is mostly confined to internet message boards, and we haven't been succesful in getting more attention with mainstream media, but we are working on it. When all those media outlets start receiving 10.000 e-mails and faxes every day I think they will give us some time on the air.
The answer is pretty sleazy I think. Refco FX (retail/small forex) is not the same as Refco Capital Markets (the one which went tits up because of the fraudulent assets due to CEO). The big depositors in RCM want their money back. RCM doesn't have enough assets (it is bankrupt). What those big guys want to do is to vacuum out all the customer-deposited funds in Refco FX (which had no fraud anywhere as far as people can tell), and put it in the pool to pay *them* back and to screw the actual owners of the money in the RefcoFX accounts, and as well, have the RefcoFX business (though what value is it if it has been known to steal money?) FXCM wants to pay for the operational business of RefcoFX and make the account holders whole.
As a RefcoFx account holder I was glad that FXCM stepped up to the plate very fast. But they have been very confident in rescueing our accounts during the last 5 months, I think driving the media away. If FXCM doesn't rescue our accounts I can't see the media covering this story because it's not current anymore, plus forex at the retail level isn't taken seriously.