The forex market (FX) is the world’s largest trading market, dwarfing the stock exchange in size with nearly US$5 Trillion traded daily. The market is open 24 hours a day, when trading closes in New York it starts again in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Currencies are always traded in pairs, for example, the US$ with the UK£ or the US$ with the EURO. With constant price fluctuations, this tumultuous market can make Institutions, companies and some individuals a lot of money.
Forex fraud is a growing problem. It can be found everywhere from boiler room scam artists, to some guy you met at the coffee shop the other day, even past trusted brokers and executives have been involved in forex scams. The most common victims are the ones who think it will never happen to them.
Though there is no guaranteed way to avoid forex fraud, it is still possible to trade, minimize the chance of becoming a victim of a forex scam, and prosper in the forex market providing you remain diligent and alert in every decision you make. Don’t let your hard-earned money become an easy target for some forex scammer, make sure any person you choose to do business with is duly regulated in the country they operate from.
People under 25 are falling in droves for the lavish payouts promised by rudimentary Instagram scams. Until recently, older people (those over 50 and in retirement) were considered to be most vulnerable to various scams perpetrated online. It makes perfect sense: a generation not particularly well-versed in the ways of this new online world would indeed be expected to fare poorly when faced with its challenges.
All that is apparently a thing of the past now. Those who currently make up the over-55 age-category, have grown somewhat immune to the tricks of the online scammers. The young adult category has become the preferred target of shady online operators, and yes, that means you too. These days, young people on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and the likes, are the most likely to fall for get-rich-quick schemes, even if these schemes are rudimentary and lack any kind of credibility, even at first glance.
The scammers start out by setting up Instagram accounts. To the expert eye, these accounts are very easy to spot and they do tend to be mostly alike. They feature pictures of attractive young people, posing in front of expensive mansions and cars while holding up wads of cash – as if saying: this could be you! Accounts featuring attractive young women tend to draw noticeably more followers for obvious reasons. There are also plenty of such scam accounts featuring the alleged profiles of attractive young men too. The scammers do not want to leave any demographic group uncovered and since they are sort of saying “this could be you”, they need characters their targeted people can identify with.
So with the above context in mind, we are here to help you recover your lost funds from the banks and credit card providers with our extensive knowledge in fraud detection and years of experience in dealing with these matters. We have a high success rate and many satisfied customers. Below we list several common Forex scams that have gained traction over the last decade as the internet has reached a larger population.
High yield investment programs
High Yield Investment Programs (HYIP) are (a lot of the time) a form of Ponzi scheme in which a high level of return is promised for a small initial investment into a forex fund. However, in reality, the initial investors are only being paid back by the money generated by the current investors and once there are no more investors in the scheme the owners usually close it down and take all money remaining.
Ponzi or pyramid schemes
This is a very common form of affinity fraud. They promise high returns from a small initial investment upfront. The early investors usually do gain some sort of return on their money and motivated by this success they then recruit their friends and family into the scheme. However, the truth is that the ‘investment opportunity’ does not actually exist and their initial return is being funded by money paid in by other members of the scheme. When the investor numbers start to drop the scammers close the scheme and take the money. We have covered this type of scam in-depth under the Ponzi & Pyramid scams section.
Point-Spread Scam
This old forex scam was based on computer manipulation of bid/ask spreads. The point spread between the bid and ask basically reflects the commission of a back-and-forth transaction processed through a broker. These spreads typically differ between currency pairs. The scam occurs when those point spreads differ widely among brokers. Brokers often do not offer the normal two- to three-point spread in the EUR/USD, for example, but spreads of seven pips or more. (A pip is the smallest price move that a given exchange rate makes based on market convention. Since most major currency pairs are priced to four decimal places, the smallest change is that of the last decimal point.) Factor four or more pips on every $1 million trade, and any potential gains resulting from a good investment are eaten away by commissions.
“Robot” Scamming in Today’s Market
A persistent scam, old and new, presents itself in some types of forex-developed trading systems. These scammers tout their system’s ability to generate automatic trades that, even while you sleep, earn vast wealth. Today, the new terminology is “robot,” because of the ability to work automatically. Either way, many of these systems have not been submitted for formal review and tested by an independent source.
Signal-Seller Scam
A popular modern-day scam is the signal seller. Signal sellers are retail firms, pooled asset managers, managed account companies or individual traders that offer a system – for a daily, weekly or monthly fee – that claims to identify favorable times to buy or sell a currency pair, based on professional recommendations that will make anyone wealthy. They tout their long experience and trading abilities, plus testimonials from people who vouch for how great a trader and friend the person is, and the vast wealth that this person has earned for them.