Special investigation: Beware of Fortress FX Fund that blew $10 million in a few hours

 

Editors note: the original article has been modified to make clear that from information available to FinanceFeeds and confirmation from Knight Capital, Fortress FX Funds is a third party fund management service and is in no other way connected to Knight Capital apart from the fact Knight Capital was used to facilitate market access and liquidity. Additionally, please note that Fortress FX Fund being referred to in this article is in NO WAY related to Fortress Prime. They are completely separate entities operating in completely separate sectors.

 

During the past few days, it has been brought to the attention of FinanceFeeds by a series of industry professionals that a new ‘fund’ called Fortress FX Funds has launched a very active campaign to lure customers into opening accounts with a broker called “Knight Capital.”

To those who are retail FX traders, the name Knight Capital may appear somewhat familiar, and to those in the institutional sector it would most certainly appear very familiar indeed as it is the trading name by which KCG used to refer to itself – KCG standing for Knight Capital Group.

There is, however, a vast difference – these two companies are absolutely nothing to do with one another, and there is no similarity in their operations, either.

Whilst the real KCG is a vast, multinational North American institutional trading company, the Knight Capital that has come to our attention in this particular circumstance is an unregulated entity whose country of origin is unknown.

The fund in question, Fortress FX Funds, whose tactics appear to be similar to that of a High Yield Investment Plan, or HYIP, (considered a form of Ponzi scheme), in which overly inflated and unsubstantiated returns are promised, investors make their deposits and then hope that they get some return – with very high risk – before the whole scheme collapses.

This particular example came to the attention of FinanceFeeds as a result of its extremely active efforts on myfxbook to entice customes with high performance.

FinanceFeeds researched this matter with a number of introducing brokers around the world who have become aware of this, one of whom explained that the fund had amassed approximately $10 million in deposits, and the accounts were completely wiped out within a matter of just a few hours.

The accounts of opened via the fund manager Fortress FX Funds and subsequently traded through “Knight Capital”, were to be managed by the portfolio management service, and the company boasted of very impressive performance over a 3 year period, placing examples of prior performance in various FX trading portals which include myfxbook and forexverified.

Opinions vary as to whether this scheme had been initiated with malintent.

One introducing broker in Latin America explained to FinanceFeeds

“Before the large amount of money was lost within a matter of hours, the performance was doing quite well actually. At some moment gains were +150% from initial capital and many customers wanted to get out at that moment, but the broker wouldn´t let them as there were “open positions”, and by doing that, the broker was not honoring the MAM agreement where the customer can quit the money manager at any moment.”

“My best guess is that Knight Capital and the fund manager that recommends it are the same entity. The “broker” may have bought a license with MT4 platform, the “fund” made a nice statement of succesful performance in the last 3 years. I expect no orders are sent to market, and the money goes straight in their pockets.”

Caveat Emptor…..