- Report: #105380
Complaint Review: United Investors Group And/or Jay Levy Tony Bobba Etc - Boca Raton Florida
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United Investors Group And/or Jay Levy Tony Bobba Etc
6909 SW 18th St. Suite 301 Boca Raton, 33433 Florida, U.S.A.
Phone:
561-394-5959
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United Investors Group And/or Jay Levy, Tony Bobba, Etc Beware: Commodity investment rip-off artists Boca Raton Florida
Warning: beware of Florida commodity firms and clearinghouses
I was interested in commodity options and had signed up for some web-based futures/commodities courses on a couple of different websites. Before letting me have the material,the sites had me register and give infomration like my name, address, phone number, etc. It seemed legit, so I went ahead and gave the requested info.
Not long after that, I started receiving quite a few calls from commodity firms, especially in Florida, asking me if I was ready to invest in some options. I blew most of them off and said I was not yet ready. One of those guys, Tony Bobba, asked if he could call back in the future to see if I was ready then.
He sounded like a decent guy so I told him ok. Sure enough, in a couple of months he called me back. At this time (March 2004) he was with United Investors Group in Boca Raton. He gave me the speech about buying Unleaded Gas options, and asked if I wanted to take the plunge into the market due to the impending market conditions. I finally said yes, and wired $5000 to open the account and purchase 5 unleaded gas contracts.
I also filled out a customer information sheet that stated my income and assets (very important point later in the story). I told him I did not feel comfortable to invest any more than that. Tony assured me that they wanted to recruit long-term happy customers, and he seemed sincere about that.
Note: Both Tony Bobba and United Investors Group seemed to have a clean record with the South Florida BBB and the National Futures Assosciation.
The next day Tony called me to thank me for opening the account and congratulate me for getting in the market at the right time, etc. He also was eager to set me up with a phone call with a real Euro Currency commodity "guru" named Jay M. Levy. According to Tony, Jay was a very important and busy currency guru that had extensive contacts in Europe, and that was very successful at his job, etc.
According to Tony, I should take any chance I had to speak with Jay because I could learn a lot. I told Tony that I was not interested in investing in anything else, but said ok and that I would speak to Jay. Sure enough, Tony was able to arrange a time for Jay to call, and Jay called while I was in the car and proceeded to ask me to pull over so we could discuss some detailed things about the Euro Currency.
The discussion started off as an informational conversation about the Euro Currency (symbol EC) and Jay told me all sorts of facts about the Euro, political & economic conditions in Europe and the US, etc. He also said I could make far moe money investing in the Euro than I could from investing unleaded gas. He also gave me lots of numbers and figures to write down about profit potentials, etc.
The "informational" conversation went on for about 15 minutes or so, then the conversation abrubptly turned into a sales pitch. He recommened that I buy $80K, $60K, $30K (or whatever I could afford) worth of Euro options. I told him no thanks, I did not want to invest more money at that time. At that point it became a high pressure sales pitch. Jay told me things like "I don't understand, I thought you wanted to make money....Tony told me you were a good guy...etc". He implied that I was lying about my assets and income, and that I should even sell some of my posessions to get more money to buy Euro options with.
NOTE: it seems UIG and Jay Levy carefully scan new customer applications with the intent to defraud the customer out of all listed assets.
We went back and forth for about 15 minutes after this point, and Jay told me that I would triple my money even if his predictions were wrong. I finally agreed to buy a few Euro options, and told him I did not want to invest more at that time, and that money was tight. A couple of days later Jay called me again and requested that I buy more Euro options before the ECB came out with interest rate announcements that week. Again, he said I would triple my money even if the market did not move in the anticipated direction. I finally went ahead and purchased a few more options and wired them the money. At this point I was supposed to be set, and could just wait for a short time before I would make a profit and could retreive my investment back.
It was a couple of days later when I finally had a chance to check Jay's background with the National Futures Assosciation, and discovered he had a long history of santions and fines for misconduct. At this point it was too late.
Well the ECB news broke, and the market did not make the move Jay predicted. In fact the value of the account dropped quite a bit. Jay would call about every other day for a period of about a month, with recommendations to bring my account value back up. Trusting he had my best interests in mind, I ended up
making many of the purchases he recommended in hopes to get back at least some of what I lost. He would always ask if I could send more money, and I said no. Jay would then say that he could purchase the options with no "out of pocket" cash, supposedly with the proceeds from previously stopped out or sold options. While doing this, Jay purchased options with money I did not have in the account which created a "debit state" in my account. Essentially, now I owed the clearinghouse
money!
Because of the debit state in my account (in addition to the monet I have lost!) I had no choice but to keep playing the market and send even more precious cash to them. Not long after that, after a series of mostly loosing transactions, I was pretty much broke. The little cash I had left in the trading account was mailed to me on a cheesy looking handwritten check from the clearinghouse, Universal Holding Financial Corp. I was lucky I did not owe the clearinghouse money after the shameful debit state Jay put my account into.
I have since filed a complaint with the NFA, the South Florida BBB (have not heard back from them), and at this time (August 2004) I have a reparations claim filed with the CFTC (case 04-R059).
In general, there seems to be a high number of fraudulent commodity firms and clearinghouses in south Florida. They are to be avoided. Also use the background check feature on the NFA site (www.nfa.futures.org) to check out any commodity firm or broker you may do business with. The BBB probably won't be much help.
Scott
Pearland, Texas
U.S.A.
I was interested in commodity options and had signed up for some web-based futures/commodities courses on a couple of different websites. Before letting me have the material,the sites had me register and give infomration like my name, address, phone number, etc. It seemed legit, so I went ahead and gave the requested info.
Not long after that, I started receiving quite a few calls from commodity firms, especially in Florida, asking me if I was ready to invest in some options. I blew most of them off and said I was not yet ready. One of those guys, Tony Bobba, asked if he could call back in the future to see if I was ready then.
He sounded like a decent guy so I told him ok. Sure enough, in a couple of months he called me back. At this time (March 2004) he was with United Investors Group in Boca Raton. He gave me the speech about buying Unleaded Gas options, and asked if I wanted to take the plunge into the market due to the impending market conditions. I finally said yes, and wired $5000 to open the account and purchase 5 unleaded gas contracts.
I also filled out a customer information sheet that stated my income and assets (very important point later in the story). I told him I did not feel comfortable to invest any more than that. Tony assured me that they wanted to recruit long-term happy customers, and he seemed sincere about that.
Note: Both Tony Bobba and United Investors Group seemed to have a clean record with the South Florida BBB and the National Futures Assosciation.
The next day Tony called me to thank me for opening the account and congratulate me for getting in the market at the right time, etc. He also was eager to set me up with a phone call with a real Euro Currency commodity "guru" named Jay M. Levy. According to Tony, Jay was a very important and busy currency guru that had extensive contacts in Europe, and that was very successful at his job, etc.
According to Tony, I should take any chance I had to speak with Jay because I could learn a lot. I told Tony that I was not interested in investing in anything else, but said ok and that I would speak to Jay. Sure enough, Tony was able to arrange a time for Jay to call, and Jay called while I was in the car and proceeded to ask me to pull over so we could discuss some detailed things about the Euro Currency.
The discussion started off as an informational conversation about the Euro Currency (symbol EC) and Jay told me all sorts of facts about the Euro, political & economic conditions in Europe and the US, etc. He also said I could make far moe money investing in the Euro than I could from investing unleaded gas. He also gave me lots of numbers and figures to write down about profit potentials, etc.
The "informational" conversation went on for about 15 minutes or so, then the conversation abrubptly turned into a sales pitch. He recommened that I buy $80K, $60K, $30K (or whatever I could afford) worth of Euro options. I told him no thanks, I did not want to invest more money at that time. At that point it became a high pressure sales pitch. Jay told me things like "I don't understand, I thought you wanted to make money....Tony told me you were a good guy...etc". He implied that I was lying about my assets and income, and that I should even sell some of my posessions to get more money to buy Euro options with.
NOTE: it seems UIG and Jay Levy carefully scan new customer applications with the intent to defraud the customer out of all listed assets.
We went back and forth for about 15 minutes after this point, and Jay told me that I would triple my money even if his predictions were wrong. I finally agreed to buy a few Euro options, and told him I did not want to invest more at that time, and that money was tight. A couple of days later Jay called me again and requested that I buy more Euro options before the ECB came out with interest rate announcements that week. Again, he said I would triple my money even if the market did not move in the anticipated direction. I finally went ahead and purchased a few more options and wired them the money. At this point I was supposed to be set, and could just wait for a short time before I would make a profit and could retreive my investment back.
It was a couple of days later when I finally had a chance to check Jay's background with the National Futures Assosciation, and discovered he had a long history of santions and fines for misconduct. At this point it was too late.
Well the ECB news broke, and the market did not make the move Jay predicted. In fact the value of the account dropped quite a bit. Jay would call about every other day for a period of about a month, with recommendations to bring my account value back up. Trusting he had my best interests in mind, I ended up
making many of the purchases he recommended in hopes to get back at least some of what I lost. He would always ask if I could send more money, and I said no. Jay would then say that he could purchase the options with no "out of pocket" cash, supposedly with the proceeds from previously stopped out or sold options. While doing this, Jay purchased options with money I did not have in the account which created a "debit state" in my account. Essentially, now I owed the clearinghouse
money!
Because of the debit state in my account (in addition to the monet I have lost!) I had no choice but to keep playing the market and send even more precious cash to them. Not long after that, after a series of mostly loosing transactions, I was pretty much broke. The little cash I had left in the trading account was mailed to me on a cheesy looking handwritten check from the clearinghouse, Universal Holding Financial Corp. I was lucky I did not owe the clearinghouse money after the shameful debit state Jay put my account into.
I have since filed a complaint with the NFA, the South Florida BBB (have not heard back from them), and at this time (August 2004) I have a reparations claim filed with the CFTC (case 04-R059).
In general, there seems to be a high number of fraudulent commodity firms and clearinghouses in south Florida. They are to be avoided. Also use the background check feature on the NFA site (www.nfa.futures.org) to check out any commodity firm or broker you may do business with. The BBB probably won't be much help.
Scott
Pearland, Texas
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Jay
San Diego,California,
U.S.A.
Clearinghouse Account
#2Consumer Comment
Tue, July 22, 2008
As soon as you suspected this was a possible scam, you should have immediately contacted the clearinghouse where your account was located and told them to close your account. I was doing some commodity trading and used a system that got me into, I think, T-Bills... My $15,000 account shot up to $40,000 within a few months. Then it dropped to $38,000 and then to $35,000... I called my broker, who apparently was not using stop losses, and asked that maybe we should get out. He replied, "Don't worry, it'll go back up." Well, "it didn't "go back up." When my account dropped to around $27,000, I called and told him to "Get me out now!" Two days later, I called my clearinghouse directly, who informed me that they never heard from my broker. I told them to get me out, close my account, and mail me a check. They did that and about a week later I received a check for around $25,000. To date, I have never found a decent broker and I stopped trading commodities a few years back. Whatever you're thinking of doing, always do your Due Diligence and take a few days or weeks to research whatever it is. And always keep meticulous records...
