As ashamed as I am to admit it, I was also duped by this scam, and for a BOATLOAD. It's so stupid in hindsight of course, but they caught me at a perfectly low point, a vulnerable lonely time in quarantine, then my gullible greed served everything up for them on a silver platter:
I was approached online through Tinder by a person who went by "Su Han" from Hong Kong, and after the usual small-talk she told me that if I was interested in investing, she could teach me how to trade in foreign exchange. I had never even heard of Forex before so I was a perfectly ripe green target. Corresponding through WhatsApp, she instructed me in establishing a demo account on MT5, and we were absolutely crushing it. I had turned the $100k demo bucks into ~$160k within less than two weeks, and since MT5 seemed perfectly legit, I wasn't too suspicious. But then she convinced me to register a "real" account with ValleyTechSpecLimited.com and wire funds to a domestic bank account listed on the deposit instructions for the site. I even checked this very website before I wired any money, but at that time on May 14th, this thread was only two posts deep, and this was the last thing I read before I plunged:
"The website is in Chinese first of all and you are assuming it's a scam because it's a shared office on the Domain WHOIS? You seem to make a lot of conclusions with very little evidence." I couldn't find any other warnings about ValleyTechSpec, and I should have paid better attention to this thread for the warning signs, but I had tunnel vision and naive hope.
I was eager after my astonishing demo returns and started at $10k, then we doubled that in only two transactions! But here's where they really got me: She claimed that the "broker" who was instructing her on the timing of these trades wasn't aware she was also passing along the tips to me, and he caught her when he noticed my trades were lining up perfectly with hers. She told me that not only would I be blocked from further trading, she too would be banned for breaking the rules unless I joined as a full member at the minimum investment of $50k. I felt indebted to her since she had already earned me $10k in "real" profits, and we hadn't made a losing trade yet, so I fell for it. I scrounged and almost couldn't come up with the funds, but then she put the nail in my coffin. She forgot to mention that their "membership fees" are $10k per quarter, but since she could already see I was struggling to come up with 50k, she offered to cover my fees for the first quarter! This should have been a HUGE red flag, but I'll mention now that she had been spending these several weeks flirting with me and sending me cute pictures, so I was pathetically wrapped around her finger at this point.
I put $50,001 of my hard-earned money into their pockets, and once again the balance began to grow quickly past $75k until an apparent platform system error this week on one of the transactions caused me to lose the entire account balance, even going negative due to margin leverage. They tried to pass it off as not their doing, Su Han claimed she had lost $86k and the broker had even lost $384k! But I checked my demo account, its chart never showed the same freefall drop in that AUDJPY value that my ValleyTechSpec chart did, they had clearly rigged the system. They claimed to file an investigation with the MT5 technicians, but I know its bull****. Before that final transaction, I had finally realized my mistake and requested withdrawal of $10,000 to test if there was a chance I could successfully withdraw any funds. The ValleyTechSpecLimited.com website I requested the withdrawal from noted that the request had been "passed", but I have yet to receive any of the funds. I went with the bitcoin option they offered and provided my wallet address, but I'll never see anything there.
I have tried to resolve myself to this horrendously foolish move as I threw $50k into a wood chipper. I don't expect to get any of it back through legal means. The only curious thought I have is that not only is Su Han still talking to me, apologizing for the losses and the holdup in my withdrawal, but another Hong Kong girl has struck up a conversation with me about this. I'm tempted to open a fully legit Forex account with someone that allows US traders, then follow these girls' tips at the same time and recover some of my losses. Would anyone be willing to advise me on this, and possibly share in the bounty if I can pass along the trade tips alongside?
Finally, hopefully this adds to the Scam Alerts requirements so that this can enter Traders Court and escalate this, also help get the word out. This scam got me before I could find any real hard warnings online, if they had caught me just two weeks later I would have bailed in time. Thanks for reading. -Nate