Remember this is China, nevermind legality, whether it's the IB or just an individual salesman, there are tons of stock/futures/forex gurus who will say "put money in the account and I'll double it in 6 months". And yes 90% of the rich people have no clue, they got their money from corruption (or just by owning a house in the right place/right time), and they don't care anything about Forex, they just want someone else to make money for them.
I know it's really f***ed up over there. All these financial stuff is just too new for them. Their "regulations" or laws cannot keep up. China is like USA in the 1900's, great economic boom but also hotbed for lots of financial schemes and scams unfortunately.
The upset Chinese investors who have been holding hostage three employees of the Australian forex broker Union Standard Group Forex (USGFX) since last Wednesday, have released them on July 24, after several negotiation attempts.