Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) has today issued a warning about fraudulent trading platforms. These platforms are all over the internet, trying to lure investors with promises of quick and easy profits.
How does a fraudulent trading platform work?
- Ways to contact: Scammers use a variety of techniques to contact their victims: a fake news article mentioning a celebrity, online ads, a fake social media account, a dating app, or even a “lost” message. In any case, the platform attracts investors by promising them very high returns in a short period of time, often far beyond the kinds of profits that are realistic.
- Registration: Interested investors register on the platform and deposit funds into their trading account. Most of the time, investors start with a relatively small amount (eg €250). In some cases, scammers offer to help victims by taking over their computer remotely to perform certain transfers on their behalf, which also allows them to use viruses and spyware, for example.
- Manipulation and pressure tactics: Once the money is deposited by the victim, the platform will manipulate the transactions to give the impression of significant profits. These earnings are virtual and the funds are not actually invested. The scammers then pressured their victims to invest more and more money (repeated phone calls, limited time offers, threats, etc.).
- Withdrawals are impossible: Sometimes it is possible to initially withdraw a small amount, thus giving victims more confidence. However, once an investor wishes to withdraw a larger amount, fraudsters use various pretexts to prevent this from happening (high costs, due taxes, etc.). In the end, the fraudulent platform disappears taking all the investors’ money with it.
FSMA notes that the following websites were bringing consumers into contact with fraudulent trading platforms:
- Something Education (
- bitcode method (
- Immediate Peak ( immediate-peak.com;
- Direct import (
- Direct vortex (
FSMA strongly advises against responding to offers made by the following trading platforms:
- 4xai (
- BFTCapitals/BFTCapitalspro (
- Bitlet (
- Bitnomics (
- BNP Groups (Clone Company) (
- Chronovalor (
- CMCapitals (Clone Company) (
- Coinbit (
- CryptoCom AI (cloned company) (
- DCY Markets (
- Easy Trade (
- Fortnomics (
- FX Margin (
- GMT Direct (GMT Direct
- High BTC Stock (
- Invotrade (
- Lasbert (
- Omega Capital Markets (
- Opti Market Exchange (
- Parenta Financial Services Ltd (
- Promarket AI (
- Where (
- Logic Traders (
- Sfcap/Safecap Investments/Finalto (
- SkyTarget Ltd (
- swiss vests (
- TigersFM (
- Titanwealth24 (
- Tradex4u (
- Verify Markets (www.verify-markets.com);
- sourdough (
- XHPX (