After talking with some victims again, I want to share with you some of my thoughts.
Every victims is asking himself the same questions after he realizes that he has been scammed.
I want to answer the most popular of them again.
1) How was it possible that I trusted them?
Well, the the mean thing in this type of scam is that it is a long played scam.
Some victims reported that the scammer "girls" chatted with them for several months before they invested anything. The more money the scammers assume at a victim, the more time the scammers take to gain your trust. Some of the scammer are really patient to wait for the right moment.
A second fact is that MetaTrader has the majority of the market share of all trading platforms. If someone has so much market share, you automatically gain trust to them. Because you are thinking that so much people can't be wrong.
And last but not least, most of the victims have absolutely no experiences in trading, and are also not trained to distinguish fake brokers from serios brokers.
2) Can I get my money back?
It depends, if you paid with your credit card like VISA or Mastercard, there is a chance to get a refund.
Contact your bank and ask them about their refund policy.
If you have wire transfered your money, like the majority of us did, then the chances to get a refund are very low. The problem is that those scammers transfer the money to several interim accounts first, before it reaches the final destination where all the stolen money of the victims is located.
3) What should I do now?
If you have been scammed, you could do atleast the following things:
- File a report at your local police. Provide them all the necessary information like bank statements, phone numbers, websites, and where the first contact occured. You will get a file number.
- Contact the web hoster (in our case: abuse@godaddy.com) and report the scammer websites for fraud. The report should contain the same info like the police report and also the corresponding file number and contact details ouf your investigator.
- Report your case here on FPA. Look first if there are already threads about the fake broker who scammed you. If you are the first victim, start a new thread in the scam alert folder.
4) How can we prevent such scams in the future?
The scammers are making use of two main weak points: MetaTrader and GoDaddy.
MetaTrader is highly abusive. You can install dozents of fake brokers directly through the app, and there is not even an option to report those. It seems like there is no verification at all for new providers.
GoDaddy is also highly abusive. You can call GoDaddy support, talk to them, but in the end nothing happens! I have heard from several scambaiters that the majority of the scam websites is hosted on GoDaddy because of their lack of action to shut down those websites.
Because MetaTrader and GoDaddy don't want to do anything,
I want to make this type of scam really public and warn as many people as posible! Some guys and I are working on a website specially made about this type of scam. We are collecting and organizing all the importand info from here.
I also want to get in contact with the press and also recommend you doing the same.
The more public the scam is, the less likely it is that new victims fall for it.
And maybe then we can achieve that MetaTrader and GoDaddy agree to change their policy and prevent the abuse of their services in the future. Because otherwise they would get problems with their reputation if we are loud enough.
And one thing I know for sure, if we don't do anything, nothing will change!
It's our responsibility to protect others from the pain we had to experience!
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