The Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) of Belgium today issued a warning regarding the dangers posed by fraudulent trading platforms.
These platforms lure investors online with promises of quick and easy earnings. Their offers look attractive, but often they are nothing more than sophisticated scams that can lead to significant losses.
The FSMA strongly advises against responding to offers made by the following trading platforms:
- Aurudium (aurudium.com, webtrader.graftey-battex.com);
- BerryPAX (berrypax.com);
- Boosty Flow (boostyflow.com);
- Chilla Capital (Clone), FXB Exchange (fxbexchange.com);
- Deal-Traders (deal-traders.com);
- Fintradix (fintradix.com, trading-area.fintradix-v4.com);
- HashXCapital (hashxcapital.com);
- Lamaco (Clone) (lamaco.org, user.lamaco.ltd);
- Lesrouleaux (lesrouleaux.com, webtrader.garnetix.tech);
- Nobu Invest (nobuinvest.com, nobu-invest.com);
- Priv-Solutions (priv-solutions.com, web.priv-solutions.com/d/trading);
- ProfitBee (profit-bee.com, profit-bee.org);
- RiseGrandAction (risegrandaction.com);
- TheExcellFuture, ThExcelFuture (theexcellfuture.com, thexcelfuture.com);
- Total-Profits (total-profits.com);
- Windelagence (windelagence.com);
- XH Pro, XH Pro Global Limited (pc.xhpro.net, xhproltd.com).
The FSMA has noted that the following website was putting consumers in contact with fraudulent trading platforms:
- Finance Legend (financelegend.org).
Fraudsters use various techniques to contact their targets, including a fake advertisement in which a celebrity is mentioned, or a message that you have received allegedly by accident (SMS, WhatsApp, etc.).
In each case, the platform tries to lure investors by promising them very high returns in an extremely short time, often well beyond the sorts of gains that are actually achievable.
Interested investors register on the platform and deposit funds to their trading account. Generally, investors begin with a relatively small sum, such as 250 euros. Sometimes the swindlers offer to help their victims by taking over their device remotely in order to make certain transfers on their behalf, which of course allows them to download viruses or spyware.
Once the funds have been deposited by the victim, the platform manipulates the transactions to give the impression that significant profits have been achieved. However, these earnings are fictitious and the funds have not really been invested. The fraudsters then put pressure on their victims to invest more money. They do so by means of repeated phone calls, time-limited offers to which investors must respond quickly, or by issuing threats.
To gain victims’ trust, fraudsters sometimes allow them once to withdraw a small amount. However, once an investor wishes to withdraw a larger amount, the fraudsters use various pretexts not to have to pay back any money (high costs, taxes, etc.).
The regulator also noted that some platforms were based on a pyramid structure. The investors are encouraged to recruit new participants. Their investment allows to pay returns to the first investors. When it becomes impossible to recruit new participants the pyramid collapses.
In all cases, the fraudulent platform disappears completely, taking with it all the investors’ money.
