The Forex market trade over $5 trillion a day, with opportunities ranging from currency options, future contracts and binary options. With this kind of money flowing around the market and the opportunities it presents, unsuspected members of the public are easily lured by Forex scammers who present offers which are normally very inviting.
From our research, the popular modern day scam scheme is the so called ‘Signal Providing Companies’ or the signal sellers. These signal companies maybe retail firms, managed account companies or individual traders. Their task is to present a system that shares testimonies of success stories, upload screenshots of their closed and running trades and use this system to lure some traders to pay a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly fee to subscribe to their signal group with a promise of instant wealth.
Many of these signal providers are scammers, it’s only about a small fraction of them that keep to their promises; even with that, their signal services decrease immediately you subscribe to them.
Another Major scam is ‘The investment scam’ this scam is championed by a retail firm, managed account firms or individual traders. Their task is almost the same as that of the signal sellers, but here, they will ask traders to invest some money and get 20% of their investment every month.
The feedback recorded from most of ‘these invest and get 20% monthly companies’ are heartbreaking. For instance, between 2013 and 2014, VIP Portal, a company in Kenya allegedly received over Sh1.08 billion from investor in what may turn out to be the biggest forex scam in Kenya’s history.
In 2017, another Forex company in Kenya allegedly scammed investors over Sh. 1 billion. In 2018, two brothers were arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria with the allegation of scamming over 3,500 people of two billion Nigerian naira.
According to Forex traders, one of the alleged victim, Pastor Olubunmi Adeleke disclosed that he invested close to N12m in the deal.
Their tactics is always very simple, they will invite members of the public to deposit their money with them, in return, they will promised them a monthly commission of 20 percent of the amount invested, with the guarantee of getting back a full refund of the initial investment if the investor decides to terminate the contract.
Before investing your money with anyone, do a proper background check and extensive review so that you will not become a victim.
Another big scam is the robot scam. Have you heard of a robot that takes trades and generate millions for you even while you sleep? yes, some of them do produce good results, but majority of them have not been properly reviewed or tested, if you are a trader and you are planing to get a robot, please do proper research, back test the robot in a demo before investing your money in a real account.
The bottom line is; forex trading is a high risk business, trade cautiously.