Zalee, you did EXACTLY the right thing. When anyone for any reason pushes you to buy something or make an investment, refusing to agree and doing some research is the perfect response. If everyone did this, the bulk of scams would fail very quickly.
The FPA is only as powerful as traders make it. If no one bothers to leave reviews and start threads in the Scam Alerts folder when they get ripped off, then a bad company could look like a good one. If too many traders don't don't check the FPA or do check, but ignore an FPA Scam Finding and sign up with a scammy broker, that broker can remain in business for many years while stealing vast sums of money.
If victims leave reviews and complain in Scam Alerts folder, that makes information available to potential clients of those companies and can lead to Scam Findings. If other traders take the time to read the reviews and realize that the FPA doesn't hand out Scam Findings on a whim, everyone will save themselves a lot of heartache (and money!). This will leave the scammers to find that their supply of potential victims keeps getting smaller and smaller.
There are still other things victims of a scam can do:
1. Report the scam to every police agency and regulator who will listen.
2. Report to whatever company processed the payment (or to your bank if it was by credit card or bank wire).
3. File a report with
econsumer.gov - Your site for cross-border complaints. They make those reports available to police and regulators around the world.
Yes, many reports go nowhere. On the other hand, sometimes some police officer, regulator, payments processor, etc. is sitting there with 99% of what is needed to take action. In that case, one more report could make the difference between action being taken and the issue being ignored.
Scammers thrive for 2 reasons. First, most people don't do research first. Second, most people won't bother to take the effort to file reports in the proper places. If you are a victim and you don't at least try to report a scam, that's the same as saying "What happened to me is ok, and I don't mind if the same thing happens to my neighbors, my friends, and my family."
If you really want to take things to the next level with some company that scammed you, there's no reason to break any laws. There are ethical ways to spread the word far and wide. Here's something I wrote on the subject:
https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/fore...-back-ethical-vengeance-against-scammers.html