In an effort to help protect Americans from fraud, the United States (U.S.) Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the addition of 23 new company names to its list of binary options and forex firms that operate illegally without being registered. The list is known as the RED List, short for Registration Deficient List.

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The addition to the 23 new company names brings the total to 40. The CFTC launched the RED list in September 2015, nearly six months ago, and the list contains the names of unregistered foreign entities that the agency has reason to believe are soliciting and accepting funds from U.S. residents on a retail basis for trading in currencies within the foreign exchange and binary options markets. These activies require registeration with the CFTC.

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Brings RED list total to 40 firms

According to the update, the name of the new firms include, Banc de Options, Barclays Broker, BeeOptions, Binary Book, Binary Das, Binary Int’l, BTG Option, Diamond Managed Forex, Forex Broker Inc., Forex CBR, Forex Investment Services, Golden Tangent Holdings, Ivory Options, Land FX, Lbinary, NRG Binary, Optionsxo, Paam-Maam Forex Fund Management, Profit Forex Corp, RealForex.com, Tallinex, Titan Trade, and UK Options. The list was made available to a number of other regulatory agencies and posted under smartcheck.gov/REDList, according to the official CFTC press release, and was also shared with consumer groups, industry participants, self-regulatory organizations (SROs), exchanges, and industry associations.

No guarantee against fraud but helps

The press release emphasized that while registration is no guarantee against fraud or mismanagement by an unethical firm, it does help bring a higher level of security and accountability to the public, such as via the enforcement of firms meeting disclosure and reporting and record keeping requirements, among other criteria such as meeting financial requirements.

For example, registration enables the CFTC to examine whether firms meet minimum financial standards as well as disclosure, reporting, and record keeping requirements. The CFTC described the list as complementing the existing database provided by the National Futures Association (NFA) such as that provided by its Background Affiliation Status Information Center (BASIC) where the public can check on the background status and to see whether firms are registered.