WASHINGTON PRIME PLUS

[mezedaki]

Dear Mr. Poirot,
A goodfriend of mine has a problem with a company called
WASHINGTON PRIME PLUS, INC.
620 Herndon Parkway
Suite 200
Herndon, Virginia
VA 20170
USA

Is there any way to find out how legal this company is? It appears that they evaporized... 40000$ in investments. Noone answers to her emails and not even on the phone they give answers. She has an answer from FINRA (financial industry regularity authority) which claim that this company is not registered in usa and a representative in greece called John Sevastakis (usa citizen) is most probably a crook. Is there any way to conirm if this company is legaly operating in USA? If it is necessary, mr. Poirot, I can send to your personal email details, which might be asked by them or others.

I wrote here as i didn't know how to find a new post.

[poirot]

I will be moving this to it's own thread in the English forum.

I can tell you that the address is well known for being a virtual office, which can be nothing more than a mailbox.

Do they have a web site?

[poirot]

She has an answer from FINRA (financial industry regularity authority) which claim that this company is not registered in usa

http://www.wpbrokers.com/corporate_profile.html

WPP clients are provided with the unique combined advantages of professional administration, normally only found operating in a highly regulated environment and the preferential benefits of trading in the USA serviced by a team of specialist brokers.

If FINRA stated that WASHINGTON PRIME PLUS was not licenced to operate as an investment broker in the U.S., and WPP states clearly on their site that they are, if accurate that would indicate a fraud and you should report it to FINRA or the FBI.

WASHINGTON PRIME PLUS - www.wpbrokers.com - www.wpforex.com

They are using trading software from a Russian company according to: http://www.dealingoffice.com/news

It's sometimes difficult to separate the virtual offices from the real ones since most companies offer both such as the one at 620 Herndon Parkway, Suite 200, Herndon, Virginia

WASHINGTON PRIME PLUS
Phone:+1 (703) 4645527
Fax: +1 (703) 4819844

Those numbers are from Verizon which could be anything from a wired line to a VoIP. Could also be from a virtual office service.

I can't find their listing on the online phone directories. Here are the businesses listed at that address:

I also can't see it listed as a brokerage firm.

or an investment adviser

The people to contact might be the Virginia authorities since WPP claims to be based there: http://www.scc.virginia.gov

Being "registered" in the u.s. doesn't necessarily means legitimate. Some operators will register a business under a different function than intended, in a state with soft regulations such as Delaware just to give themselves an appearance of legitimacy. They register with a U.S. rented mailbox, and VoIP or cell phone. That's the reason you must do a proper due diligence even with a business that seems to have solid U.S.A. coordinates.

We at Fraudwatchers are not qualified to do such research. We also don't evaluate investment plans. We can only point to red flags, if any.