Wealth Recovery International was kind of a legitimate assets recovery business. They had offices in New York and Tel Aviv but recently closed the Tel Aviv offices. They wer like an aggressive militia with private investigators and an international network of attorneys that one could hire to recover money lost to scam brokers and they were quite good at it. They will cost a lot and they might have got your money back, or not.

Cons

• Very Expensive
• Mixed Reviews From Clients
• Leader Austin Smith pleaded guilty for fraud and headed to jail
• Dishonest: creates false statements of expenses to avoid refunding clients

My Overall Experience with

Wealth Recovery International

My first impression of Wealth Recovery international was one of relief. After being scammed out of $75K, I was finally discovering a strong force to fight back. Austin Smith is a charismatic figure and the fact that he is not hiding his background as a former binary options ‘investment expert’ was a sign of transparency that was refreshing after all this time in the darkness in regards to the scam industry. In many ways, I admire Austin Smith for facing the music and being a leader against the scam industry.

The Wealth Recovery International Strategy

By any means possible, getting your money back. The preferred proposed strategy is to chase the money to gather enough intel and evidence on the fraudsters in order to intimidate them into a settlement. There is also the possibility of proceeding to chargebacks on your credit cards. To hire Wealth Recovery International will cost you 10% of the money you’re claiming back up front, to pay for legal fees, and 25% of commission on the recovered money. They do promise to refund 2/3 of attorneys fees if you haven’t recovered your money after one year.

Time is of the essence!! Quick, transfer some money!

Sounds familiar? On the phone with my Wealth Recovery International claims analyst, she gets all wound up when I tell her I’ve been sending money to Hong Kong. She tells me Austin Smith is going to HK on the week end to check some fraudsters bank accounts. It’s a perfect opportunity to get my claim moving so I need to sign the contract now and send $1000 at least by the end of the day or it will be a missed opportunity! The feeling was just all too familiar and this was my first glimpse into questioning the asset recovery industry as being an extension of the scam industry.

Good or Bad Advice?

While talking to some director at HQBroker to whom I lost $75K, they looked at my file and agreed that there were some irregularities and they wanted to send me back $22K. Speaking to my WRI contact about it, her first train of thought was to adjust WRI commissions rate higher on the back end to 35% since I was looking at a payout without having to pay all of the upfront 10%. But then she advised that this money was insufficient compared to what HQBroker took from me and that it would weaken my case to take it and so I should stop talking to anyone at HQBroker and focus on legal action. This was a legitimate opportunity to negotiate with the broker and get something back from them. I turned it down on the premise that Wealth Recovery International was willing to wave the 10% upfront to add it to the back end. I learned a few weeks later that this was not the case anymore and that my case was being dropped for lack of payment.

Quick on the draw

Fighting criminal organizations and dealing with fraud victims must be nerve wrecking. WRI must have many enemies out there and they evolve around a world of fraud and lawsuits. I guess this is to be expect from a very expensive wealth recovery business and I suppose this is what’s need it to make it in this industry. But, when I went about asking some questions to get some credentials about the business, something to support their legitimacy like settlement agreements or court cases they won, my claims analyst got really upset and told me they just won a court case against someone slandering them like this could be what happens to me next. I had to calm her down and remind her I was the victim here asking for help, not the bad guy.

Also, I’ve been reading about various legal actions WRI is involved with that is not related to clients claims directly but more like litigation between operating partners and slandering wars. With all its money and attorneys, it seems WRI is a real bully. Once again, that might not be a bad thing if they are working for you, but what if they fail you? How are you going to deal with them?

Convicted Binary Options Fraudster: A Good Thing?

Others might call him a Whistle Blower, it appears Austin Smith had a change of heart and switched side when he realized he was scamming people out of hundreds of thousands. I myself see an opportunist who saw how he could make a pile of money fighting for the victims of an industry he knew the ins and outs. It makes perfect sense but still, its awkward having to deal with a business that is constantly described as the brainchild of a binary option scammer. Nonetheless, when I look at Austin Smith’s videos, I am grateful he has turned and is providing insider perspective on the scam industry. 

The False Statement

After a while of not hearing back from Wealth Recovery International, I enquired about getting a refund for my claim that had been dropped. I knew it had been dropped since my claims analyst had told me so. It was dropped because I could not afford the huge upfront fee that was in my contract. Fair enough. But when I asked for my retainer back, I was told it had all been spent. I asked for justifications and so I was sent a statement with a bunch of expenses such as communications with the client (which never took place), a letter of representation from a lawyer (which I’ve never seen) and some ‘Open source Intel Discussions’ at $200/h, of which I never heard anything from. I literally got nothing back from Wealth Recovery International. Not a report, not a statement (until I asked for a refund) and certainly not a bunch of phone calls and emails for which I had been billed for. I certainly did not get any Intel about anything related to my case.

So I asked for justification for these expenses. For instance, I asked for a copy of the attoney’s letter of representation which cost $500 on the statement, as well as a copy of the attorneys’ invoice, but I got nothing. In fact, Wealth Recovery International stopped answering my emails. So I moved on to calling my bank to recall the transfer of money I had made to Wealth Recovery International. That’s the good thing I learned from them, the existence of chargebacks.

This conference, by Austin Smith, is very instructive to understand the investments scam industry from an inside perspective.

Mixed Reviews

Of course their website is full of success stories  but no one gets a perfect track record and by digging a bit, we can find upset clients having paid large sums of money and getting no results to show for.

Bad Friends

Wealth Recovery International is working with various legal counsels but one that comes back often in the comments I read, like the one above, is Birman Law. This specific Law Firm based in Israel has a very bad reputation when it comes to helping binary options scams victims. Of course its hard to trust everything you read on trustpilot.com and there might be 12 happy client that I don’t hear about for one unhappy client who is pissed off enough to write about it. Nonetheless, they have a score of 95% BAD reviews on trustpilot.com. They are very expensive, slow, and non-communicative. The typical feedback is that Birman Law will pressure you to get a retainer and then disappear for months before telling you they can’t do anything else than go to litigation and that you will have to pay court fees and to fly on location several times for the proceedings.