However despite fraud conviction for its founder MMA Forex appears to remain open, clients still looking for their money.
In what has to be one of the most bizarre stories we’ve covered (and there are many in the forex world), comes what seems to be the conclusion of the episode of Dubai based MMA Forex, and its flamboyant founder and CEO Malik Noureed Awan.
Gulf News reports that Awan — who has been jailed in Dubai for several months since the MMA Forex fraud was discovered back in August — has indeed been convicted by a Dubai court, and has been sentenced to two years in jail.
For those who follow LeapRate, the story of a fraudster promising outlandish returns from FX trading who later can’t seem to return client money is not that rare.
So what is so special or bizarre here?
Well, several things.
First, it seems as if the never-shy Awan has grown immensely in popularity since the fraud was discovered and he was initially jailed back in August. Awan’s official Facebook page — on which he calls himself the ‘Youngest Successful Businessman of Asia’, an ‘Asian Business Tycoon’, ‘Mr. Forex’, and modestly refers to himself as ‘Sir MNA’ — has grown from under 20,000 Likes to now over 36,000. Since his incarceration in August Awan has blogged defiance, and almost daily ‘new’ pictures of Awan appear on his Facebook page in a variety of locations and with a variety of celebrities — all, of course, taken before he was thrown in jail.
Second, the Gulf News report stated that other parts of the ‘MMA Group’ seem to be sham as well. (At one point Awan blamed Gulf News for causing the problems at MMA). The supposed MMA Airline exists only on paper, and apparently has no licence to operate commercial flights. MMABank GT, which is essentially a general trading company, is listed by various countries under the blacklist of firms with which one should avoid doing business. MMA Forex itself is not listed with the Dubai government or the UAE Central Bank. Claims that it is registered with VG Bank Investment Bank AG also proved hollow as Gulf News reported that the German firm categorically denied having any relationship with them.
And most puzzling to us is that the MMA Forex website still appears to be up and running. If the founder is in jail for fraud, and clients are owed money they cannot get, why exactly has www.mmaforex.net not been shut down? (It was offline last week for five days, supposedly for maintenance).
While never denying that he hasn’t returned investors’ money, Awan has written posts such as “all my stakeholders know that MMA is going through some financial crises but I promise we will rise again…”. As far as the guilty verdict goes, Awan posted an “entirely different point of view about the court’s decision,” stating that the “judgement of the court is entirely one sided and the court has not heard anything in my defense. Steps will be taken against this judgement we will even approach high court in this regard if needed. Clients do not need to worry, we still have a lot of ways to change the entire situation.”
Who actually believes this guy???
We also wonder if he will ask his cellmates in Dubai prison to also address him as Sir MNA?
For those of you who do trade forex, we strongly recommend that you do so with a properly licensed and regulated broker, such as those on LeapRate’s Approved List of forex brokerage firms.
For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.