Cybertrading
Investor protection - recovery of invested funds
The fraud with cyber trading websites (online trading platforms) has now reached enormous proportions in Europe. Colloquially, this fraud is also known as investment scam or broker scam. Countless small investors and consumers are becoming victims of the fraudulent machinations of a handful of cyber fraudsters, who cause damage estimated at several billion euros annually.
Fraudulent procedure
keyboard_arrow_rightTo find new victims, cybercriminals use aggressive marketing practices:
- The victims are recruited via social media or directly through call center employees.
- The call center employees sell themselves as professional and experienced securities traders, using false identities.
- The call center employees are psychologically trained in advance and base their sales talks on manuals and scripts prepared by psychologists and sociologists. In this way, they quickly build up a relationship of trust with the investors.
- After the first small deposits, investors are made to believe that high trading profits will be made on their trading accounts in order to entice the victims to make new higher investments. The investors invest thereby allegedly in binary options (Binary Options), difference business (CFD), foreign currencies (Forex) and crypto currencies (Crypto).
- Constant telephone calls from call center employees and the already developed relationship of trust strengthen the investors' compulsion to invest.
- As soon as a certain investment sum is reached, the victims are no longer willing to make further deposits or demand payouts, suddenly, usually overnight, a total loss occurs.
- From this point on, the call center employees are no longer available and the victims usually realize that they have been defrauded and have lost all their deposited money.
keyboard_arrow_rightBeware of new deposits
It can happen that the fraudsters use clever practices to harm the victims again:
- Supposed changes of advisors are made to entice investors to make further investments.
- Supposed tax payments are wrung off, which are not necessary, so that the investors get their apparent profit only disbursed.
- Payments are demanded for alleged failure insurances, which there are not well noticed, in order to cushion the damage of the investors allegedly.
keyboard_arrow_rightBeware of recovery platforms:
For some time now, so-called recovery platforms have also been appearing, which are designed to help victims recover the money they invested. They advertise for example with the following suggestions:
- "Get 50% of the investment by paying 15% and the other 50% by opening an active account with our company".
- "Get everything back by paying only 22% for bank clearance fees."
- "Hold the trading account with 100% of the investment and deposit only 1,500 euros for legal fees."
We can only warn you that victims will get involved in this fraudulent scam. Usually the same cyber fraudsters are behind these recovery platforms.
keyboard_arrow_rightOnline trading platforms
We currently represent claimants of the following online trading platforms:
- 24option (Rodeler Ltd)
- ActWeb Trader (Cryptoarb)
- AGM Group / AGM Invest
- AlphaFinancialGroup
- AspenHolding (Next Trade Ltd)
- Brevan Howard CFD Ltd (WinnGroups)
- Britonprice
- CodexFX
- Cofinancial
- Demure Consutling LTD
- Elite Trading
- Fibonetix (Zeus Tech & Trading Group Ltd)
- Finaxis
- FX-leader Limited
- FXTime
- GCG International
- GrahamFE Services LTD
- Grandefex
- Investing Pro
- KapitalFX
- KontoFX
- Lcoin Market
- Libra Markets
- Markets.Online
- MyCryptoWallet LTD (MyCoinBanking)
- Netbit services and solutions limited
- Nobeltrade
- Obsbit
- OlympusMarkets (Next Trade Ltd)
- OMCMarkets
- OTC Markets
- PremiumBorsa
- PrimeFunder
- QTeck (QTP Solutions Ltd)
- ShareFounders
- SoloFXB
- Speed Solutions Ltd
- Swiss Capital FM
- Tradixa
- Ukfinvest
- XtraderFX
- ZurichBFX
Penal measures
We already represent numerous victims. In any case, we recommend that injured parties take immediate legal action by filing a criminal complaint with the police or the public prosecutor's office.
Liability of the recipient banks
In comparable cases to date, we are also taking action against the banks receiving the deposits, which have evidently failed to comply with their due diligence and compliance obligations and were thus downright involved in investor fraud.
Banks are obliged to establish and verify the identity as well as the content of the business profile of a contractual partner. In most cases, this is done by checking the legal form, the registered office address, the date of foundation and the entry in the commercial register. In addition, a bank is obliged to check and plausibilise incoming payments. Finally, banks must carry out risk-adequate monitoring of their business relationships, including the transactions carried out in the course of the business relationship, to ensure that they are consistent with the business profile.
It has been shown that the recipient banks carried out transactions without complying with the above-mentioned obligations, especially since the accounts of cyber fraudsters were usually emptied when the investments exceeded certain amounts.
Deposits via crypto currency exchanges
We have noticed that recently, however, deposits have no longer been made only through banks, but also through crypto currency exchanges (Crypto-Exchanges), such as BITSTAMP, JUBITER, BITPANDA, KRIPTOMAT. First, a so-called wallet (account) was opened at a crypto currency exchange, usually with the help of call center employees. Then the victims transferred their funds to the accounts of the crypto-currency exchanges and these funds were exchanged into crypto-currencies, usually Bitcoin. The exchanged Bitcoins were then transferred to the fraudsters' wallet. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to track down the cyber scammers in this way and make civil claims against the crypto currency exchange. For this reason, we now also offer cryptocurrency transaction investigations with external partners.