On Trustpilot, FXCT Investments (www.fxctinvestments.com) looks excellent with a 4.4-star rating out of more than 480 reviews. This creates confidence for potential and existing customers. If Trustpilot didn’t exist, the scammers would invent it. Unfortunately, this review and rating site is one of the essential tools to deceive consumers. Most of the 5-star reviews are written by boiler room agents or new clients who still see initial (fake) profits in their dashboard. These are fake reviews. This is also the case with FXCT Investments.
A faked reputation
The Bulgarian Noga commerce EOOD allegedly operated the FXCT Investments scam. However, the contact us section offers an address in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). The scammers behind FXCT Investments have also ordered a good fake review on Finance Brokerage. On the other hand, a realistic 1-star review can be found on ForexBrokerz. Various financial market regulators such as the Belgian FSMA (here) have issued warnings against the scam.
Stealing data and funds
Several scam victims described how he was cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars. Here is the story of one victim that is based on the abuse of client data:
- The responsible FXCT Investments account manager with the stage name David Malo has opened an account at the regulated Slovak crypto exchange and payment processor Global DLT Exchange s.r.o. d/b/a CoinDeck (www.coindeck.com) and Jubiter (www.jubiter.com) in the name of the customer (victim). Without his consent.
- The FXCT Investments account manager pretending to be the client (victim) then transferred the money of the client (victim) to CoinDeck. Without his client’s consent.
- Subsequently, the funds in the CoinDeck wallet were used to purchase cryptocurrencies. The customer received a text message on his mobile from CoinDeck about the successfully completed sale.
- The purchased cryptos were then transferred out of the client’s CoinDeck wallet. And vanished for good.
FXCT Investments abused the customer (victim’s) data for money laundering purposes in the first place. Therefore, we always warn not to register with scams or fraudulent marketing campaigns. Under no circumstance should people upload KYC data such as passport copies to unregulated entities. This could be the beginning of a very bad ending.
Waiting for CoinDeck
It is always possible that payment processors are fooled with stolen data. Especially in the high-risk area where CoinDeck operates. Even with proper KYC procedures in place, incidents such as FXCT Investments can happen. The question is how the payment processor then deals with it.
We recently ran a story on CoinDeck and its CEO Richard Brockhume where we were assured that they would not accept scam operators as customers and that they were constantly working on improving KYC. Therefore, today we sent a request to Richard Brockhume and asked for his support. He came back and promised to have his people investigate these FXCT Investment incidents. We will report back. Stay tuned!
