February 13, 2019, | AtoZ Markets - OctaFX a global Forex broker that offers access to CFD trading, commodity trading and indices trading with award-winning Forex trading conditions has recently released a warning for its users.
OctaFX takes initiative on issuing warning against scammers
As a rule, the task of warning investors about scam firms lies on the shoulders of the local financial regulators, such as Baffin in Germany or CySec in Cyprus. However, this time, OctaFX, based in St. Vincent and the Grenadines took initiative in its hands informing about their company impersonator. Although, the company did not provide concrete information on how fraudulent firm lures investors in their business.
A broker in a message published on his official page warns that phishing and fraudulent imitations of their service have become active recently. Particular attention OctaFX focuses on the ‘o-ctafx website. com ’, with whom they are not associated. The retail broker stresses that the aforementioned address owners illegally copy their product and use it to attract investors. The company reminds in no case to provide personal information or any details on sites that look suspicious. Further, the broker advises what to do in the event that data leakage could not be avoided:
"Go to your personal account on our website and change your credentials as quickly as possible. If you are unable to access your Personal Account, contact our Customer Service immediately."
Forex fraudsters invade social media
According to the broker, they have already taken steps to inform, block and delete the scammer's page from the Internet. The company also warned all traders not to get involved with unverified traders in social networks, as there is also a risk of stumbling upon scammers.
Access to the site is currently restricted to Google. Thus, it is not easy to determine what fraudsters do. However like most of the clone firms, they supposedly simply deceive people into making deposits and then never return the money.
In addition to the clone firm, OstaFyH mentioned the scammers who work through social networks. Unfortunately, the broker did not specify who the scammers are and what social networks they work on. In the past, fraudsters, using the OctaFX logo to give them legitimacy, aimed at people through Instagram.
It is well known fact, that industries of "influencer" or "educator" develops rapidly. New brands and startups as well as large corporations hire influencers who, due to the large number of followers increase the distribution of a product through social media channels. These people pose as trading experts, often luring potential customers with promises to get rich quickly, but they actually work as affiliate marketers for brokers. In some cases, these are legitimate companies like AvaTrade, which has used affiliate marketers in the past. Most of these influencers like one well-known “teacher” FxLifeStyle that encourages traders to sign up for a broker based in Dominica are scammers who have nothing in common with brokers.
Update: Atoz Markets contacted OctaFX representatives to clarify information about the scammers they were warning their users. By the day of publishing the following message from the retail broker team was received :
- 1.The scammers operating under OctaFX name with URL www.o-ctafx.com are looking for people interested in account management. They contact them via social media, people interested in their services send them money, they claim to trade on their behalf, present their victim great trading results, claiming to be trading with OctaFX (but as far as we understood other brokers were mentioned too, just unsure which ones) and once their victim wants to get their money back they cannot. We know that these people must be based in the States, as one of the victims who contacted us was from there, probably unaware that we do not accept US clients.
- 2.The social media scammers might be operating through Instagram and Twitter. We have two Instagram accounts that were brought to our attention, we believe they are absolutely hoax, we tagged them in our posts on forex forums (like FPA) but we are still waiting for screenshots of their exchange with the victim that would help to fully expose them. We think that these people will set up new accounts soon, as we reported them for several abuses of community guidelines.
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