It’s a jungle out there in the world of online trading. It’s important to have the information you need to make the right trading decisions–whether you want to trade forex, options, stocks, commodities, or cryptocurrencies.
Unfortunately, many dodgy players pretend to be brokers or offer crypto mining and other financial services. It’s not surprising that there are more sham operations than regulated, legitimate brokers.
Don’t fall prey to these scam brokers, but do your due diligence before opening a brokerage account. Also, find out everything you can about these brokers. Read broker reviews created by Broker Complaint Registry experts who understand the dynamics of fraudulent and legitimate online financial services.
Ideally, fraudulent brokers would be more obvious to spot, but too often, they adopt clever disguises and use tactics that can fool even those with trading experience.
It’s important to check for a license. However, this isn’t as simple as it may seem. We’ve seen unlicensed brokers adopt a name and a logo similar to regulated brokers. This is called a clone broker scam, and the intent is to mislead people who are intending to trade with a licensed broker, but they get confused by a similar name and sign up with the scam broker instead.
In addition, there are cases of brokers who did have a reliable license, but they may have had this license revoked by the regulator. Perhaps they lost their license because they used false advertising, received a plethora of customer complaints, or were caught engaging in unscrupulous activities. It’s very common for these brokers to continue to tout their license as if they still have it, and to continue their unsavory activities.
A broker may be licensed, but maybe it’s a third-rate license from an offshore regulator. Some of these regulators simply issue licenses for nearly everyone who applies and doesn’t undertake any auditing of their licensees, nor does it provide oversight for consumers or pay attention to their complaints.
Any legitimate broker should want prospective clients to get to know their company. However, many fraudulent brokers are evasive. Their websites don’t reveal any information about them–who runs the brokerage, where they are located, their credentials, or whether they have been written about in the press.
Phrases such as “The world’s greatest broker,” on web pages can seem harmless. No one is going to expect them to prove objectively that they are the world’s greatest broker. However, it is indicative of a lack of professionalism that is also apparent in poor quality web content and extravagant guarantees.
If you see guarantees that you will make specific rates of daily, weekly, or monthly returns, whether the amount is 2%, 30%, or 90%, don’t look any further. Brokers shouldn’t be promising specific rates of returns.
Researching a broker is important. That means doing “negative” research as well-finding out if there are any red flags, customer complaints, or regulator warnings about the broker. Customer review sites aren’t entirely reliable, because many of those reviews are created by people in the company or competitors.
That’s why our scam broker lists–which are updated monthly–are an essential tool for researching trading services. With our up-to-date scam broker list, you can feel confident that you have current information on brokers that is useful for making smart decisions about trading.
If you’ve lost money to any of these scam brokers, it’s important to seek our assistance. We’ll launch an investigation to bolster your claim and help you track down your funds.
We create these reviews to warn consumers about brokers and schemes that may be fraudulent. If you have an account with a broker on our scam brokers list, close it and request a withdrawal. If you are not given your money back, contact the Broker Complaint Registry right away. We will consult with you, work to track down your funds and create investigative reports that will help you with your case.
