Trading on the stock market is potentially one of the most lucrative activities on the Internet. It is communicated from all sides that it is worth entrusting your money to professionals - and your profit will vary from 5% (in the worst case) to 100% (in the best). All you have to do is bring money to brokers - and a new car, a fur coat for your wife and a summer residence for your mother-in-law are practically in your pocket!
However, when entering the rough trade waters, it is worth remembering that it is easy to drown there. Until 2016, the brokerage market in Russia was a variation on the Wild West theme of the gold rush. A negligible number of people managed to get the valuable metal, and sometimes there was an impression that it was not people who earned through organizations, but organizations on gullible investors.
After federal legislation patched especially large holes through which fraudsters filled their pockets, the situation stabilized a little. But not completely.
How pseudo brokers cheat customers
To this day, there are many dubious companies operating according to the same scheme on the Russian brokerage market. They lure gullible people with promises to increase their capital by trading on the Forex exchange, promising to increase their fortune several times.
- Most often, exchange rates are the object of trade.
- And then a fraud scheme begins to operate: although the client is regularly informed that transactions are being made, the amount of money in the account increases, but for the best result, you need to deposit a small amount. And further. And further.
- And when a client who has recovered his sight decides that it is enough for him and tries to take his money, the account is reset to zero, and the company puts the citizen in a total blackout.
Scammers are also helped by the fact that people tend to be poorly versed in legal documents, especially in the regulation of the securities market.
In fact, it turned out that the client of such an organization does not conclude any transactions and does not buy any securities, but only bets on the increase or decrease in the exchange rate. And not on the Forex exchange itself, but inside the closed mini-exchange of the dealer itself.
Blacklist of fraudulent companies on the Russian securities market in 2019
In early October, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service presented a list of twelve pseudo-broker companies that defrauded customers. it
- 10 Brokers
- Barclays Trade
- Born to Trade
- Delloy Trade
- Global FX
- Go Capital FX
- Grandcapital
- Kappabrokers
- KBCapitals
- Swiss Trade
- Teletrade
- WerCrypto
The main features of a pseudo-broker company
How not to fall for the bait of scammers, such as in the brokerage anti-rating of Rosfinmonitoring? Please note that all of these companies have a number of things in common.
- None of the above organizations are registered on the territory of the Russian Federation - they are all offshore.
- None is licensed by the Central Bank. But according to federal law, this license is a necessary condition for legal activity as a forex dealer.
- None are members of the professional union of brokers (the so-called self-regulatory organization). At the moment, there is exactly one such self-regulatory organization in which the dealer firms are members - the "Association of Forex Dealers".Moreover, the number of dealers in this SRO is very small - only 4 pieces, and all of them are subsidiaries of large banks. Until December last year, 5 more independent brokers were members of the SRO (Forex Club, Teletrade, Alpari, TrustForex and Fix Trade), but the Central Bank asked them to “exit” due to regularly recurring violations. That is, in fact, it turns out that the number of legal, legal Forex dealers in the entire Russian Federation can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
- Companies have a short period of time on the market. In fact, an organization can take money from the population for much longer, however, in an attempt to cover up their tracks and nullify their reputation, they often change their names.
- Not all that is gold, on which the word "gold" is written. Take Barclays Trade, for example. Barclays is a world-renowned concern, one of the largest players in the financial market. However, our Russian homebrew version of Barclays Trade has nothing to do with the original. Fraudsters only "borrowed" the name in an attempt to give themselves solidity.
- The company has negative reviews on the Runet. Yes, yes, the World Wide Web remembers everything, and on specialized forums you can find a lot of interesting things if you search.
Signs of a Law Abiding Broker
The traits of a broker who, with a high degree of probability, will not abandon their client, are exactly the opposite of the above.
- This organization has a registered office in major cities of Russia, most often Moscow or St. Petersburg.
- It employs a number of experts, each of whom has a high citation index in the media and is published in professional publications. Moreover, it does this not for a month, not two or even six months, but for two or three years.
- The top of the company are public people with a good reputation. And customer reviews only confirm this.
- This company is also one of four members of the self-regulatory union of brokers. These are Alfa-Forex, VTB Forex, PSB Forex and Finam Forex.
One of the most effective ways to catch money fish in Forex waters is to familiarize yourself with the main principles of PAMM-investing and invest exactly as much as you do not mind losing.
And, the most important advice: before you carry your money to someone, do not be lazy to study the laws governing this type of market or activity. If reading such documents is difficult for you, you can hire a specialist who will translate them from legal to everyday language for a certain amount. This will help you save your money in the future.