Techniques Used by Fraudsters on Forex Trading
Their techniques are as varied as their methods of establishing contact. What they all have in common is their ability to convince. The skills that make them succeed are essentially the same skills that allow any good salesman to succeed. But scammers have a decisive advantage: they must not keep their promises. In the absence of this responsibility, they have no hesitation in promising all that is necessary to persuade you to part with your money. Here are some of their techniques:
Expectation of Large Profits
The profits a scammer talks about are generally large enough to make you interested and eager to invest—but not so large as to make you overly skeptical. Or he may mention a profit figure he thinks you will consider believable and then, as a further enticement, suggest that the potential profit is actually far greater than that. The latter figure, of course, is the one he hopes you will focus on. Generally speaking, if an investment proposal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Low Risk
Some are so blatant as to suggest there’s no risk—that the investment is a sure money maker. Obviously, the last thing a swindler wants you to think about is the possibility of losing your money. (If you ask how you can be certain your money is safe, you can count on a plausible-sounding answer. Besides, at this point, he figures you will believe what you want to believe.) To make his pitch more credible, a scammer may acknowledge that there could be some risk—then quickly assure you it’s minimal in relation to the profits you will almost certainly make. A con man may become impatient or even aggressive if the question of risk is raised—perhaps suggesting that he has better things to do than waste time with people who lack the courage and foresight needed to make money! With this kind of put down, he hopes you won’t bring up the subject again.
Urgency
There’s usually some compelling reason why it’s essential for you to invest right now. Perhaps because the investment opportunity can “be offered to only a limited number of people.” Or because delaying the investment could mean missing out on a large profit (after all, once the information he has confided to you becomes generally known, the price is sure to go up, right? Urgency is important to a scammer. For one thing, he wants your money as quickly as possible with a minimum of effort on his part. And he doesn’t want you to have time to think it over, discuss it with someone who might suggest you become suspicious, or check him or his proposal out with a regulatory agency. Besides, he may not plan on remaining in town very long.
Trust
Scammers seem confident about the money you will earn, allowing you to be confident enough to let go of your savings. Their message is that they are doing you a favor by offering the investment opportunity. A fraudster may even threaten (pleasantly or not) to end the discussion by suggesting that if you are not really interested, many others will be. Once you showed interest, he realized that your savings were almost in his pocket. While you may not be able to spot a scammer the way he talks, most are strong, articulate individuals who will dominate the conversation. The more they talk, the less likely you are to ask questions.
Who are the investment scammers?
They are a faceless voice on a phone. Or a flashy website on the Internet. Or a friend of a friend. They can operate on the savings of their victims from a back office or a shabby boiler room, vast expanses of cyberspace or a large suite located in the new building of the bank. They can wear three-piece suits or helmets.
They may have no apparent connection to the investment industry or have an impressive list of impressive letters following their names. They may be flippant or talkative, or seemingly timid and shy, so you almost feel compelled to tax them.
The first rule to protect yourself from an investment scam is to get rid of any idea you might have of what a scammer looks like on investments. Indeed, some scammers do not start to be scammers. There are cases in which individuals who held positions of trust and esteem – accountants, lawyers, real investment brokers and even doctors – sacrificed their ethics to the detriment of the swift management of an investment scam. In yet other cases, investment programs that had begun with legitimate intentions had been thwarted or ignored by mismanagement, leading the developer to mismanage or run away with investor capital. Whether it’s a scam or just an investment, the result is the same. That’s why protecting your savings from fraud involves at least three steps.
1.Carefully check who and what you are dealing with.
2.Examine carefully the investment offer itself.
3.And continue to monitor any investment you decide to make.
None of these precautions alone can suffice.
Who are the investment victims?
Who are the victims of the investment scam? If you are absolutely certain that this could never be you, the investment fraudster starts with a big advantage. Investment fraud usually happens to people who think it could not happen to them.
Just as there is no typical profile for fraudsters, there is no profile for their victims either. While some scams target people known or suspected of having deep pockets, most crooks think that everyone’s money spends the same way. It simply takes more small investors to fund a large fraud. In fact, some crooks deliberately seek out families with limited means or financial hardship, believing that these people may be particularly receptive to a proposal offering quick and important benefits.
A favorite argument is that small investors can only become wealthy if they learn and use the investment strategies used by high net worth individuals. Of course, the scammer will teach them! Although victims of investment fraud may differ from one another in many ways, they unfortunately have one trait in common: greed beyond their prudence. They also want to believe what they want to believe.
Successful film actors and athletes, successful business professionals and executives, world-class political leaders and economists have all been victims of investment fraud. The same is true for hundreds of thousands of people, including widows, retirees and workers – people who have made a living with difficulty and lost it quickly.
How Forex Scammers Find (or Attract) Victims
Fraudsters try to emulate the selling methods of legitimate investment firms and sellers. Thus, the fact that someone can contact you in a particular way – by phone, mail, email or even a reference should not be considered in itself as an indication that the investment is or is not dark. Many well-known companies also use the same methods to effectively and economically identify people who may be interested in their investment products and services.
Keep in mind that “investigating before investing” is good advice, no matter how you are approached. These are some of the methods that men (and women) usually use to contact their victims.
Phone
Phone boilers remain the preferred means for fraudsters and their sales teams to quickly contact a large number of potential investors. Even if a scammer must make 100 or 200 phone calls to find a month (one of the terms that scammers use to refer to their victims), he believes that the ability to pocket thousands of dollars from someone’s savings is always a good salary in terms of time and money involved.
Some sellers of fraudulent investments purchase lists of authentic addresses – names and addresses of people subscribed, for example, to a publication related to the investment, having responded to previous mailing offers or with other desired characteristics by fraudsters. In the hope of avoiding any notification by the postal authorities, mail order fraudsters can not do direct or immediate advertising for your money. On the contrary, they often try to make you write or call for more information. Then comes a call from the seller or the person who concludes the transaction. Some may call even if you have not responded to the mailing.
