Beware: Impostors falsely using the name of Investing.com to rip off unsuspecting service providers, brokers and direct retail traders – FinanceFeeds investigates

False names, false locations, false hope and a false product.

We have all heard this before, and many FX brokerages and service providers have been at the receiving end of calls selling extremely dubious ‘make money’ campaigns or have been unfortunate or rash enough to hire sales people who steal intellectual property and then sell it illigitimately to their future employer who in some cases encourage such acts and some which engineer their platform in such a way that the customer information of their very own white labels from who they survive can be stolen.

There have been cases of former binary options or unregulated FX fraudsters closing down, upping sticks and then selling their white labels’ data to other firms by using untraceable identities. There have been several long-standing attempts by ‘education’ scammers to dupe brokerages and clients by extorting them for unproven software and rudimentary sessions in which the ‘trainer’ marks himself out as an aggressive guru, littering cyberspace with images of yachts, helicopters and a champagne lifestyle, all of which is disingenuous.

FinanceFeeds has investigated this recently, and yet it still goes unnoticed and untackled by regulators.

Just when it could be considered that the depths of oblivion had been plumbed by the most unscrupulous devils from the least reputable regions of the world, FinanceFeeds has become aware of another unpleasant tactic, this time by impostors using the name of Investing.com which is a very large retail FX economic calendar and market news resource, with a vast global audience in various languages.

Investing.com has for several years been a pinnacle of information for retail traders, hence carries a lot of weight when approaching a retail audience. Retail brokerages that face retail customers also value the presence of Investing.com as it is a mainstay for commercial advertising in order for retail clients to view current offers and sign up for accounts.

Thus, a fraudulent entity may well seek to use such a name, as recently was the case with FXStreet, which FinanceFeeds investigated, along with assisting FXStreet to set their point straight.

The latest ruse, this time operated by an entity called cfdgrow.com which, when visiting the site, demonstrates no security certificate and a potential virus threat.

Representatives of cfdgrow.com are contacting service providers such as charting firms, market analytics companies and vendors, as well as direct retail clients, in order to gain the collaboration of the service providers in bringing revenue to them, and in order to onboard direct retail customers.

The representatives concerned have the usual thick accents and poor English, appearing to have strong Israeli tones, and are applying the usual absurd tactic of pretending to be called Linda Jones or Connor Smith despite their appalling Middle Eastern intonation and obvious lack of vocabulary and ability to articulate themselves.

This tactic is an age old one, and has been used by Israel-based scams ranging from Green Card Lottery to binary options to false marketing firms, with many employees from all of those having transferred between one and another dubious enterprise. Most of the sales staff at unregulated FX and binary firms in Israel can trace their ‘careers’ back to DSNR, a boiler room for false green card lotteries, to online poker sites, and illicit affiliate marketing schemes.

In this case, “Connor Smith” or whatever his name is that day, along with his shape-shifting colleagues who say they are from England yet have managed to develop a mother tongue level Middle Eastern accent, is making calls to vendors and traders, stating that they are from Investing.com which is clearly untrue.

We spoke to several recipients of these calls today, one of whom – a professional market analyst based in London – explained ” He opened the call by saying he was calling from investing.com. He said he was not selling anything, just doing a survey on the markets. The representative then passed me over to an account manager who told me he is with www.cfdgrow.com.

“I looked at their website and found no address or regulation. Just a UK phone number I asked nicely repeatedly about the company. With no real answers I told him he was breaking several laws. He then said, “Your mother is a c——–r” and hung up” explained the recipient of that particular call.

Another company that approached FinanceFeeds is a specialist news analytics firm, also in London, who said “I get these calls all the time. I can tell it is not genuine as they are from bad phone lines, there is unbelievable background noise and they speak with thick accents yet pretend to be in England and use British-sounding names.”

An institutional trader in London who has received three calls this week from different representatives of this entity holds the regulators responsible, blaming ESMA for not taking the steps taken by the US authorities of banning entities from offshore or unregulated regions from soliciting individuals or firms under the jurisdiction of the European regulators.

“It is all very well making laws that we all have to stick to as traders and brokerages in Europe, but all this does is make us all have huge costs, and have to change our entire infrastructure, trading environment and the way we work with brokerages changed, yet fraudsters from elsewhere can call people, pretend to be whoever they like, misuse the intellectual property of well known firms and there is nothing anyone can do about it” he said.

This particular trader asked the representative “Are you regulated?” to which the reply was “Are you kidding? We are self-regulated. We are international, and do not need regulation. We have applied and it is not a problem.”

“Not a problem” – these are often words used by countless binary or unregulated FX firms and can be heard from forceful voices from Haifa to Beersheva.

In the case of cfdgrow.com the operational entity is presented as being in the Marshall Islands, and one of the operatives said that the owners are Estonian, but this is hogwash. Yes, they may well have a company registration in the Marshall Islands, but that is as easy as sending a postcard. No actual operations are there. Additionally, the firm has a VOIP-provided false British telephone number.

“We do not put our address and regulatory details on our website, but if you give me your email address I’ll email them to you”  was one laughable response when asked about the authenticity of the company.

“We guarantee 100% profit and zero risk” was another.

“They all have very strong accents yet English names, and there is a massive amount of background clatter, along with false Swiss or British telephone numbers on their materials” said another recipient.

This is well worth staying away from, whether a trader or service provider and the same degree of trepidation should be used with this as that used when approached by the similarly structured affiliate networks that have been exposed by FinanceFeeds.

Mind how you go….