Okay, so I am really tired of this and somehow I am sure that you are tired of it as well. No, I mean really, what the heck is up with all those Forex scams?
I postponed writing this article for long enough, and I did not want to include any website addresses, names or other references, but you know what, someone had to share this.
Call me arrogant or irresponsible, or maybe you think I have bad manners or whatever, but honestly, I come from an honest family and I hate saying bad things about others, but I think now it is time. Someone has to do this. Someone has to take the risk and just tell the world.
So it does not matter if you have been trading Forex for years or just started yesterday, I am sure you will be shocked at some or even all of the things I am going to tell you here.
The Forex business is tough
Is it easy to run a Forex business? What do others say about running a Forex business or being a professional trader?
If you tried to run a business in Forex–I mean to sell an honest and genuine product, you would hit the wall the first day.
Yes, that is no joke. I am not kidding. I haven’t tried to open and run many other businesses online, but I have tried affiliate marketing in the past and in 2009 I started to run a business offering trading tools for Forex traders.
Now I have seen and know other people who have businesses online. They teach various things. They teach marketing on Facebook, they can teach you marketing on YouTube, and they also teach how to create websites and start online businesses. They can teach you how to create eBooks and then sell them on Clickbank. There are hundreds and thousands of different business opportunities online.
I mean just look at these categories on ClickBank Marketplace.
Each of those have several, or even dozens, of sub-categories too. You could create an app, write an eBook or create any other information product to any of those categories and just sell it on Clickbank. But you know what, I bet that the Forex niche is the most difficult one to sell something too.
Still wondering why? Well it is because 90% of those who are selling anything related to Forex are scammers and spammers. Yes, I made up that number of 90%. I do not have any data to back that up, but really, lets take a look at the first 20 results on Google when searching for the term “Forex robot”.
Forex robot scam websites
So if we take first 20 results from Google search on search term “Forex robot” and remove the forums, YouTube videos and review sites from that search results list, and just leave the results which are sales websites for forex products we have these at the moment.
www.forexrobottrader.com
www.mt4fxrobot.com
www.wallstreet-forex.com
fapturbo2.com
www.forexsunrise.com
fxflash.com
And there is one that advertise using Google Ads at the moment I used that search.
http://www.mfm3.net
I am not adding active links to these sites as I do not want any trouble with Google rankings, so if you want to visit them you will need to copy/paste these URL’s into your browser’s address bar.
Now almost all of them claim to make you millionaires. Really? Yep, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, William Dunn, Paul Tudor Jones, George Soros and hundreds of thousands other millionaires could have used trading robots instead of doing hard work. Just click here and there and a $99 forex robot will make you a millionaire in no time.
I know you will fall for these if you are looking for a shortcut to make money.
Do they have verified trading record using Myfxbook.com or some other reliable system? I am not talking about the MT4 statement uploaded to a website. These can be created in no time using the right apps or even Excel. It is not that hard for a programmer to create an app that can create fake MT4 statements, really. You won’t be able to tell the difference. It is in HTML format which is really easy to edit.
So what about the Myfxbook credibility for these sites?
Let me check … just one site has Myfxbook verified results and that is the wallstreet-forex.com robot.
All the other sites do not have a live statement and they spend all of the time exporting MT4 statements, uploading them to the website, taking screenshots of those statements and then uploading them again to the website. So wouldn’t it be easier to spend 5 minutes to setup a myfxbook account and connect your MT4 account to it? Myfxbook then provides simple HTML code to add to the website. It saves hours of time and possibly hundreds of dollars for not hiring a website developer to upload all those files and create screenshots, etc.
Does this make sense? These sellers will probably ignore your email if you ask them if they have myfxbook live results, or they will tell you they do not have time for that. But actually everyone has 5 minutes to improve their business and their conversion rate drastically. Do you agree with me?
Well, it is likely they do not have anything to add to myfxbook, so that is the reason why it’s not there and they are not sharing live statistics on their site–they have something to hide.
It’s funny how some sites take screenshots of myfxbook verified results and add that to their websites. So what am I supposed to think about that? Is this from some 3rd party strategy and myfxbook account? If you have your own account on myfxbook with all these super profitable results and you share these screenshots on your website, why don’t you add a link to that profile so we could see if it’s real?
Oh, I get it, you just do not want to mess with the website visitors who are that smart and just want to sell your crappy stuff to people who do not understand what they are buying.
Just look at the fxflash.com and mt4fxrobot.com sites. They have screenshots of myfxbook. So why don’t they add links to the actual profiles? Probably because it had very bad performance and they removed it and just took screenshots of the good trades.
I will leave mt4fxrobot.com for later, because I could easily write a book about this scam.
And fxflash.com, they do have a verified trading record at mt4i.com and according to that this robot doubled their account in 270 days. So that might be worth a closer look, but the fact that they use other scammy content on their website creates distrust in them. Actually I am even thinking it is possible to outsmart the mt4i.com results? No offence guys, I know you are a huge great company doing a good job, but that’s just my thought. If someone has this type of verified results, but then fails to spend 5 minutes to add a myfxbook link, but spends much more time to take screenshots of myfxbook results and upload to the website, it just looks like something is not right. It looks really suspicious to me.
Or maybe those results on mt4i.com are from a completely different strategy? That could be the case and I will talk more about this later.
Don’t judge a trading robot on just a backtest even if it looks awful
Next, there are lots of backtests and personally I never trust them. They are the last thing to look at when you trying to evaluate if some trading strategy has potential. Now before you start hitting me with emails saying that I am out of my mind saying that backtests are worthless let me remind you that I am a programmer and I know how this stuff works. The StrategyTester in MT4 is good for determining if a trading robot works according to the rules that programmers put into the code, but it’s not good to test if an EA has the potential for profit. I will get back to this later sometime and write a blog post about it, but for now let’s look at another autotrader called WallStreet robot.
They have lots of backtests, but again, when we have a verified track record then all these backtests are just additional proof for many traders, because (sadly) lots of people are crazy about them and trust them like nothing else. So it was a smart move to add backtests here anyway, because people will ask for them for sure.
They also have MT4 statements uploaded on the website, but actually it does provide good trust in them because of the myfxbook stats. I mean I would never trust MT4 statements from the fapturbo2.com robot, because they do not have a verified trading record on myfxbook to prove these statements are genuine, but I would trust them on the WallStreet robot site.
So after all the websites I just would not trust any of those from the first 20 Google results. Now I don’t know about you, but my BS filter was triggered on all of these sites, excluding WallStreet. It does look like a real deal there.
I can’t say they all are scammers, but they do not have verified trading records of any kind and they have so many things that make their sites look like a scam. Everyone has his or her own BS filter, but after I lost thousands of dollars trying countless trading systems, apps and trading robots online, I know my BS filter has evolved for sure.
Maybe I am wrong, but for example, if you compare these offers with forexsignals.com, a genuine signal service with multiple signal providers, you will definitely spot the difference. On each signal provider page it says “Transparency is important to us” and there is a link to myfxbook.com results. I even see that Nick McDonald, the owner of this project, opened a real money account for each of those providers and added myfxbook links to those. This is just a wonderful additional proof I have never seen before.
How about Forex Peace Army Reviews?
Now lets check the Forex Peace Army for these 7 sites. Or maybe you have personal experience with any of those yourself?
So fapturbo2 on FPA has lots of reviews and comments from people mad about the product. Of course it could be the bad period for the EA and people get mad about that, but it’s not just about the results. There are complains of many different kinds: like the seller of FapTurbo2 mailing lots of affiliate links and having bad support.
Of course, there will always be mad customers who will go and post bad things about your company no matter how good and nice you are with them, so don’t take these reviews for granted. But in overall robot evaluation, these reviews sure add up to a final decision whether or not you would want to go and purchase that product.
There are not too many reviews for fxflash on FPA, but we can see many negative reviews for forexrobottrader on FPA.
Probably the strangest Forex robot scam of all
I am going to tell you about one more scam. No, I did not purchased this robot myself, and I do not have 100% proof that it is a scam, but their website triggers all of my BS filters that it possibly could. To be honest, I do not understand why no one shuts this site down. Again, no links, so if you want to take a glance at these sites you will need to copy/paste these URL’s.
Here is the website at mt4forexrobot.com
And here is another one www.mt4fxrobot.com
Same website, but different URL. This is strange?
Take a look at these too.
mt5forexea.com
fxrobot-mam.com
fxarbitragerobot.com
forexarbitragerobot.com
arbitrageviewer.com
arbitragefxrobot.com
arbitragefxea.com
mt4fxscalper.com
arbitrageforexea.com
Yep, all of these belong to the same guys, or might as well call them scammers. All of these URL’s now just redirects to each other.
There are few others that no longer work.
http://www.arbitragerobot.com
http://www.arbitrageforexrobot.com
http://www.arbitragerobotfx.com
http://www.arbitragerobotforex.com
And if you want more info on this scam just go to FPA and read reviews about this mt4fxrobot scam.
An interesting fact here is that this website gives investor passwords to MT4 accounts and some of those accounts seem to be on quite reputable brokers like IronFX. It is very suspicious that they do not give MT4 server names and give only an IP instead, so this could be pointing to any server out there on the internet to provide some false data/information to the MT4 client terminals and make them show whatever these scammers want people to see. So if they have cracked the MT4 protocol and give that false data with super profitable trading record then anyone could fall for that. But the reason why they do not have myfxbook records is probably because myfxbook is not that stupid to accept data from any IP address and just has a list of IP addresses of all genuine Forex brokers.
So lets take IP address that is given on that website which is 119.81.27.125 and according to the mt4fxrobot website it belongs to IronFX broker.
No here’s interesting thing. I have my profile on LinkedIn.com and I receive offers almost every day from Forex brokers to become a partner for them. In other words, to become an IB (Introducing Broker) whose job is to bring customers to the Forex broker and get paid commissions for each trade the client takes on his account. Now I usually ignore these messages when they come to my email or on LinkedIn, but when I received three messages from IronFX I thought I would ask them about that IP address.
So they were all different people working at IronFX and they probably do not share information about what people they are contacting. So I thought it would be interesting to ask them the same question and compare their answers.
One of them said he cannot help me about this, the 2nd confirmed that this IP belongs to IronFX and the 3rd agent confirmed that this IP does NOT belong to IronFX. So now I am totally confused.
I also tried to contact their support team through their website about this IP and got no answer.
Well, so let’s just install MT4 from IronFX and see what IP addresses they use.
When you install any MT4 from any broker and go to File -> Open Data Folder you will see a folder opened with files from that MT4 platform.
Now when you open that “config” folder you will find a bunch of files. The ones you need are with the file extension .srv and you may not be able to simply open these files on your computer. You could try to open them using the Notepad app, just do not change anything inside as to not damage the connection to your broker.
Do not mind this if that was too confusing to understand for you, but the reason I did this is to illustrate that there is a really reliable and up to date source on where to find all of the IP addresses that a Forex broker uses.
So I have found 14 of these .srv files in the IronFX MT4 platform and all of these IP’s do not match the one posted on that scam website.
So this just gives us one more reason to not trust that website (like it wasn’t enough reasons already).
I bet the same is with all of these other IP addresses posted there. And actually I remember I tried to contact FXDD broker last year several times about the other IP address on that mt4fxrobot site. I got no response or they just said they cannot confirm such information.
But wait, so who owns that IP 119.81.27.125 address?
Well, we can find this information by using one of these IP tools:
- IP Info by www.vpnmentor.com
- ipaddress.my
- iplocationfinder.com
- whatismyipaddress.com
- infosniper.net
- iplocation.net
I was surprised that all of these tools gave the same answer. This IP address is located in Singapore and belongs to an organization called “Ironforex Limited”.
Not I am not saying anything … but all this looks strange for sure. I am not saying that IronFX are scammers as they seem to have been around for a really long time in this business. But personally I won’t work with them after this experience.
Now I have noticed that this website has myfxbook screenshots with no links to actual profiles, but on some images it is clearly visible the name of the Myfxbook username which is “ECNRobot”. So I was able to find that using Google and here it is.
http://www.myfxbook.com/members/ECNRobot
They do not have that many MT4 accounts there, but this one is showing huge profits with a really strange performance graph.
Now I am not adding an active link to these pages because no one knows how long they will be online so you need to copy paste them into your browser to open.
http://www.myfxbook.com/members/ECNRobot/mt4-fx-robot/920184
Here is the screenshot of the performance graph.
It is a real money account on IronFX with 72,684.12% profit which shows a profit of more than $2 million dollars from just a $3,000 account?
You know what this means? Everyone who bought this EA would already be millionaires if not billionaires. Man, it just looks silly how Mark Zuckerberg spent all these years creating Facebook to make a fortune. He could have just used this robot and make much more money. Of course that was a joke.
I scrolled down on that page and saw a “Monthly Analytics” table which shows that most of the profit was made in May of 2013 and that was well over 2000% profit. The rest of the months were significantly less profitable.
Anyway, enough of this forex robot. I bet by now you already understand why every product in Forex is considered a scam at first glance and still many people fall for it as they are hungry for those shortcuts to quick riches that just does not exist. Actually, they do exist and that is to scam other people that you are selling them something that will make them rich. Crazy, right?
Fooling people by showing results from another Forex product
So how about taking different trading robot results and putting it on a scam trading robot website to fool people? Yep, that is possible and some scammers do this. Once I was a victim of such a scam. I had bought a trading robot for $255 USD (or something like that), but when I received it I immediately saw that was not the same trading robot that was advertised on the website and the trading record published on the website was from some different robot.
I do not want to talk much about this, because that guy really got abusive when I asked for my money back. It was really something that got me worried, because I received scary threats to my family. How’s that for a seller?
I see that this website is no longer online in business and possibly belongs to someone else, but here’s what information they have at FPA.
I was not the only one who got scammed by this guy and I see FPA even had an “online court” for this site.
So anyway, that website looked like scam and I knew that I might end up loosing money, but I still was very curious to try it.
Everyone can teach Forex trading using history and price charts
Or even worse, they become a victim of a market maker Forex broker and just lose his/hers capital to the broker thinking that he “just lost the money in the Forex business”.
They operate with this in mind and “sell them a dream to become rich, educate them on some system that seems to work for the last few months, hook them with a forex broker that pays referral commissions, and then leave them to themselves to just lose the money“.
Yes, you can’t be responsible for someone trading in forex, his emotions, fears, bad decisions, etc. But if you teach trading forex you better teach the pure truth and SAY IT ALL. Not saying something means you are not a liar, but it is still not a fair approach of training.
Anyone can teach how to make money in forex by giving examples of trade setups on a history chart, but only few can teach to do it right and to predict the future price movements.
I know there are a lot of names out there in Forex, but months or years later it comes clear that they have something to hide too.
So, as an example, let’s take 2 imaginary trading strategies now. Let’s say that first strategy WAS profitable in March, but terrible in April. But the 2nd strategy was the opposite, which means it was WAS working wonderfully in April, but it sucked in March.
Are you with me? So basically in this example we just find 2 trading strategies that were working at different times. For example, a trend trading strategy will not be profitable when market moves in ranges and prices are bouncing between support and resistance, but at this time the range bouncing strategy will work just perfectly.
So ideally in April, when you see that the first strategy was profitable last month (in March), you will be teaching people to use the first system. And then in May, when you see that the first strategy was no longer profitable in April but then the second strategy was profitable, you will be teaching the second strategy. It is like checking which trading strategy was profitable last month and then starting your class by saying “Well people, today I have a different strategy to teach …”. And then the next month, when you see that this strategy is no longer working, you find another one and you begin the class with “Okay, so now I want to introduce you to this trading method …”.
It is obvious that we couldn’t have known which one would be profitable at what time, as we can just see the history. We also do not know how it will work in the future, but many people do not care about that. They just care to teach and then leave, and of course get paid in the process.
Are book authors really worth trusting blindly?
When I met John Bollinger in one of his short classes, I understood that not everyone has an interest in becoming a superstar Forex coach. He is doing his thing and just does not care about this “scam Forex world” that we can find everywhere online. John is doing a really great job and I encourage you to learn from him. His book about Bollinger Bands is amazing as well. So I thought people who write books about Forex must be really genuine Forex coaches. Well, I’m not sure about that either. I mean this is not always the case. If we take a look at the best selling list of Forex books on Amazon we would find books that many people buy and read. However if you read the reviews, many of them say that the book is teaching nothing more than just some simple Moving Average crossover strategy, for example, or something similar. In other words the book seems to be written just for advertising purposes trying to sell some product.
Now I know there are a lot of arrogant people just complaining about everything and it is most likely they will be mad and go to write a negative review while good people will enjoy the book and not bother to write a review anyway (unless they are asked to do this). But if there are several reviews about a Forex book and they all tell it teaches only simple Moving Average crossover strategies then I might think twice if it’s worth spending time reading it.
I have written a book myself and it should get published on Amazon this week, so I’m not sure how it will end up for me, but what I learned is that not every book author is someone you can trust 100% when it comes to the Forex business. It was a long and hard work for me to write the book, edit it, design a cover, format it according to Amazon requirements and then upload it to be available for public. But I guess if there are people who are good at this then they can hire a writer to create a 50 page book about any simple trading strategy just to hook the reader on some upsell later. In this way it does not sound like that much hard work if you do not care if your book gives anyone value.
I know I put my knowledge into my book with all the honesty I have, so sometimes I even get a thought that it won’t be that popular because it does not have any of that mumbo jumbo about getting rich quickly with some secret system in a month.
Is a Trading Robot That Does Not Make Millions Overnight Worthless?
Another thing that I would like to bring to the table here, since we are talking this topic already, is that many people who see my programs for MetaTrader try and attack them right from the start. They do not seem to bother reading about the program and ask me to send them some strategy tester results or some other crap reports that they believe will give them a reason to know if my app will make them millionaires or not. They want this so they can know if they will be able to buy Versace shoes, expensive watches and diamond rings for their girls while spending time on a yacht it the Caribbean.
Is this where the world is going? I mean, come on people, you can have better goals than that.
When I created my first program for MT4 I did not know what I was doing, but I knew it should have some value for traders, because its idea was given to me by a Forex trader at that time. I can’t remember who he was and if he was profitable or not, but he gave me few ideas about what traders need and I just followed that motivation. From there more and more traders came to me asking to add this and that feature, make this app do this and that. Soon I realized that I created such a confusing trading tool that even I cannot really understand what the purpose of it was. I started to optimize it, removed some features that were not useful for most of the traders and just left those that seems to be popular.
On all pages that explain my tools I say that it does not work without human intervention and that you will need to set it up right to fit your needs, etc. In other words you need to be a trader to use my trading tools. You need to understand what you are doing, understand what you need and know why and how my programs will help you. It won’t do any good for you if you know nothing about forex trading, well, maybe unless you just want to play with some trading app to learn how it works. It seems there are many people who are just curious about how they work and do not care if they make money or not. They are on a learning path, training themselves and getting self-education using apps, programs, etc.
Anyway, this story is not about my tools. What I wanted to say is that lots of these scammers really made the Forex market a crappy space to work in. Everyone who needs to get into this space needs to get over so much crappy stuff. I mean they will need to read tons of blogs and watch dozens of videos until they learn how to separate the right from the wrong. They will need to test dozens of trading systems, lots of trading tools and hundreds of indicators until they understand that there is no Holy Grail. They will take trading courses and follow at least a couple of signal providers just to realize how fast they can lose money in Forex. Because of that many people lost trust in any Forex product at all.
Speaking about the Holy Grail, I found this article the other day on Google. It was buried below dozens of crappy sites, but I found it and I really like how Jim Dandy just speaks his mind about the concept of Holy Grail. I encourage everyone to read that.
Sometimes scammers look like really genuine people at first
So anyway, he comes to me and rents a trade copier for a monthly fee and sells trading signals to a few dozens of customers. I speak with the guy by email, setup everything he needs to run my trade copier and do not even notice anything suspicious. He seems to be just another signal service with a funny domain name.
Now a month later I send him an invoice of 200+ EUR for the copier app/service and do not get any answer for a few days. I email him again and this time even use additional email addresses that I have found on his website. No response either. A week later one of his customers contacts me and tells me this quite long story how he ended up paying around huge amount of money to that “best trade copier” guy and now ended up with nothing. I cannot give more details on this right now, because I did not get permission from that customer, but that is not the point. I did not hear another side of the story, but you know what? The “trade copier guy” did not respond to my emails. I shut down his trade copier service after a week and he did not get back to me either. So he ended up being in debt for me a little more than 200+ EUR, but the worst thing is that he did not deliver for that client.
So yes, it could be that this is some kind of a misunderstanding, but since the copier guy cheated me I really believe he just ran away with that client’s money as well. I found some bad comments and reviews about that guy online too, so this adds to his bad reputation as well.
So my point with this and other stories is that there are so many people in Forex that are just looking to take your money and do not care about you in the end. There are so many people who run Forex blogs and websites, services and even Forex brokerages who are only interested in taking your money and they do not care how they will do it.
I really don’t like to give names, website addresses, and to make enemies online or even offline. I really don’t like to gossip about others too, but all these scams are going way too far. If you are smart enough you will improve your BS filter and learn how to identify crappy products and sites.
Another robot selling site
Recently I have received an email from this site www.fxphantom.com.
And it’s funny coincidence, but this site has myfxbook and mt4i statement screenshots only without giving links to real profiles so we could check them. Also it has an old MT4 statement from 2012. This robot claims it win 96.1% trades and has a video showing the profit in MT4 made in 2012. Now it seems this is some trading robot launched in 2012 which hasn’t been updated. So the reason why it shows only screen shots from the myfxbook must be that it does not work anymore and got pretty bad results on myfxbook.
Now maybe they will end up earning good profit for others and become another phenomenon in forex, but proceed with caution, because most forex robots that come out of nowhere like this one usually end up losing and disappearing weeks or months later after refund periods are over. No one ever sends you updates and information if a robot stops working, except your friends if they happen to use it. Me and my friend John tested several robots that were looking so good, but once we put them on a live account or even a demo account they just don’t deliver what’s promised. And yes, I mean promised, because they usually give you promises that will not likely be fulfilled or are close to impossible to deliver.
If you are reading this post months ago after I published it, all these websites I talk about may not even exist.
Now I have a trading robot I built myself several years ago and I sell trading signals, so I definitely don’t mean that every forex robot, signal provider and trading system is a scam. I doubt I am the only one with a Forex product that I care about. I do not want to sound like “I am perfect” and “they are scammers”. I am just frankly sharing my opinion with you about why it is hard to sell Forex products. I also know what reaction you may get from customers that are upset if they lose money. Usually this happens when people start trading your system during a bad period, which of course no one knew was coming. This can happen to any system, even the biggest stock funds. Check out this article I wrote about the reaction of customers when your signal service goes into some losing months.
Of course bad trading periods can happen to any robot including scam products too, but usually the website and the sales copy on it tells you if it’s a scam or not.
Conclusion
I really hope this has given you some ideas and some warnings about what to look out for online with sales pages and flashy products. It is hard to tell the good products from the bad most of the time. Never risk money that you cannot afford to lose. That is true both for funding your trading account as well as risking money purchasing a product. Always read as many reviews as you can; the more research you do the better. You will be able to save yourself lost time and lost money simply by reading reviews online. Remember also that you will need time to test out everything, and 30 days is rarely enough time for a proper test.
So what do you think? What other methods you know to find out if product is a scam?
78 replies to "No, I mean really, what the heck is up with all these Forex scams?"
Wow dude! You wrote a book! LOL….
I really enjoyed the post and learned a lot from it. As someone who has never actually tried to take peoples money by selling my code before I am unfamiliar with forexverified.com. I just posted a link to my tradefader on my site and left it at that…
Imagine my surprise to see an EA that I wrote years ago and gave away because I wrote something better, in the top ten at forexverified. I guess I need to learn how to send them my latest ea to test with.
I look forward to reading your book when I get it so that I can know what I’m talking about if I decide to recommend it.. Thanks for the link to my “Holy Grail” article I wrote… it’s the only real article I’ve ever written about forex… maybe I should do another? PipPIp….Jimdandy
Jim, I am always glad when my blog posts help people to learn something new. Your post about Holy Grail is truly amazing. You should write more 😉
Hi Rimantas…you were very informative-though i also need to test you before trusting you-as you suggested..lols. but i think i trust your analysis. So my question…; what brokers will you reccomend i trade with? Currently i trade with ironfx… thanks!!!
Dear John,
yes, totally makes sense to test me as well 😉
As about recommended brokers, I truly cannot give any recommendations. At the moment I trade with Sensus Capital Markets and I am pretty satisfied, but I know someone who had bad experience with them as well. I guess there is no broker who is 100% awesome. There will always be a chance of a misunderstanding, error, or who knows what.
If you want to learn more about scams you might be interested in my new eBook “How to Identify Forex Scams”. Just signup for my newsletter to get it.
Regards,
Rimantas Petrauskas
That customer you refer to that got scammed by Joseph Fibonacci (probably not his real name) was me. You have my permission to say whatever you wish about our conversations, other people should really know about this piece of crap human being. He is 100% fraud. He screwed me out of several thousand dollars.
This guy was selling a trading course with a slick sales website, which the website has been taken down, and a trade copier. After making the purchase for the trading course and trade copier, he never sent anything. It took me several weeks to get hold of him, only after threatening to open a case with BluePay (the online payment method). He then sent me about 10% of what was promised while reassuring me that the rest was coming. His reason for being late was he was in the process of finding more people to help him with all the administrative stuff (BS). It has been several months since and I have still received nothing more except for the massive trading losses from his trade copier service. He simply does not respond to any emails or phone calls.
Every month or so he sends out emails that says he is switching to a new trade copier and blames the trade copier for the poor trading results. He actually blamed your trade copier Rimantas in an update video, saying it was causing too many problems. That is a bunch of crap. I’ve used 6 or 7 trade copiers before and your is by far the most reliable and simple to use, best back office as well.
At one point this guy had 17 losses in a row through the trade copier. I don’t even know how that is possible unless he was deliberately trying to screw people out of more money by purposely making bad trades.
I have since taken up a fraud case with BluePay and they sort of admitted I was not the first person to have these problems with this guy. They basically can’t do anything about the lost money. I have also noticed hat many of the websites he was using previously have now been taken down. Either way, I can handle the lost money but not everyone who may trust this guy can. It just really bothers me how blatant the scam was after you hit the pay now button and that I was dumb enough to fall for it.
Lesson Learned! Never buy from anyone who you can’t verify from a third party website.
Keep up the good work Rimantas
Brandon, thanks for sharing your story. People need to know all about this and other scams. I am sure God will pay you back for this loss in some other way if it’s not the money.
Hi Rimantus
Again you have shared some great words of wisdom. If only everybody who is new to fxtrading read this article FIRST … how much money, time, effort and frustration it would save them.
Keep sharing such good articles .. the interner needs you (and people like you).
well done
Kieran Murphy
Ireland
Thanks, Kieran. I appreciate your support.
Thanks. This was very good .
Thanks, Arnold. Glad you like it.
Rimantas WOW what a work of love. Is it any wonder you’ve been successful at this and I haven’t. The dedication to research and track like a bloodhound is to be commended but most of us don’t have the time away from TV to dedicate.
Thank you for doing such an article. I have been involved in forex for many years and have bought and had made a number of “holy grails”. These days I just watch and unsubscribe from the multitude of new bright 95% wins that find my in box. I’ll follow up on a few of those urls but I’ll have to be fast because they’ll have moved on the next lot of crap.
Cheers
Colin Glover
Colin, I am glad you like my work. You’re right that it takes dedication to create such post. I think it’s about 7k words and it took me few days to write and do the research.
I get new scam offer in my email every day, but good that Google throws them in Spam folder immediately 🙂
I always unsubscribe forex or affiliate make money leads. Today I was going to unsubscribe yours as my habit, then just the title got interested.
I wonder, why not many people comment on your site?
I also wonder, you have a better job coding EA, why sell something? Sell your time and code as freelancer and give something valuable for free? Like THV, Like James 16(he sales private forum membership, but at first he wasn’t selling, still his thread in forexfactory is just like Awesome)?
These are some questions that instantly popup when reading any signal or Buy this EA type of website.
You know the power of free, don’t you? Not the power of trial, it’s power of free. Of course people look for holy grail and you can sell your book and signal service. But I wonder. It’s just getting complicated.
Maybe I’ll read your website, but most of time, I unsubscribe. I might not reply anymore, because I get at least 20 of these mails in my mailbox on a daily basis and its hard for me to find the good one out of them, so I just use unroll.me to unsubscribe them.
But I’ll be reading some other posts that seems valuable to me.
Anyway, thanks with your success.
Nasim, thanks for sharing your opinion. I do agree that free is good. I have some of this, but it’s getting too difficult and time consuming to handle, especially when new MT4 comes out and I need to update each app that I have. When I moved to bigger projects I quit coding EAs as I want to create mass products to help more people. I have been coding EAs since 2009 and it just got at that level when all I do is reply emails and write code, 12 hours and day.
I release new blog post each Monday, so stay tuned 😉
Thanks mate great article I’m sick to death of scammers on the internet why is so hard to find an ea to make 10% a month. Why don’t governments police this isn’t it fraud
Chris, I think police would take action only if the scam gets huge and there will be millions of dollars scammed.
It’s truly a hard job to find Forex product that works. It’s time consuming and cost money.
Hello and thank you for your insights from the country of Mrs. Watanabe.
I have been in this Forex industry for years now and still this post was enlightening to me with lots of new information to learn from. I have bought 50-100 EAs and Wallstreet Forex was one of a few that actually earned some profit besides, of course, your Daily-F. (No affiliate tags included :P)
Adding to the points you brought up here, Forex is a zero-sum game (unlike stocks) and you don’t want to give away your profitable EA or sell it cheap. So I see relatively higher prices ($~300+) and recurring fee structure as good signs.
Hiromichi, thanks for sharing your experience with us. It’s always a pleasure to work with you!
[…] Grail. He said that he was so impressed with it that he was going to include a link to it in his next blog post. I will have to say that his post is quite lengthy but educational and well worth the time to read […]
I’m really inspired together with your writing skills as well as with the structure to your weblog. Is this a paid subject or did you modify it your self? Anyway keep up the nice quality writing, it is uncommon to see a nice weblog like this one nowadays..
Thanks. Most of blog posts are written by me, some get expanded by my writers, but usually the idea or shorter version behind the post is mine. Particularly this one was fully written by me, but edited by my writer to fix mistakes. English is not my first language. In fact right now I am at the mall again, with the cup of green tea, getting ready to write my next blog post 😉
Stay tuned!
In my country, there are many Forex scam artistes too. Sometimes you wonder why intellectual people will fall into an obvious scams. The most probably answer is greed and impatience. Look beyond that, these scams won’t be able to succeed.
Great sharing as usual Rimantas and yes this topic never gets bored!
Thanks, Wilson. I agree that greed and impatience acts a big role when people fall for scams.
Another great article Rimantas.
I certainly hope you are making enough money from your efforts, you certainly put the effort in.
After many years in FX I know (and try advise) never to pay for any FX product that claims to directly make money for you. The products you have designed and sell are great for assisting success and fall under a different category to courses and EA’s etc.
The retail side of FX is something the industry simply cannot continue without so a great deal of hype will be around as long as trading FX is.
Continue with good products and honesty and people will appreciate your efforts, ‘good’ is rare throughout the world, but when you encounter it, it is refreshing.
Conway, thanks for all the good words.
For fxphantom, this is their live account, I hope you check it but don’t laugh 😀
They use two grid trades in the same time, each with a SL of 250 pips for tp of 10 pips
http://www.myfxbook.com/members/sPhantom/sphantom-auto-trader/585390
Mourad, I know this one. I’ve tested on a demo account. Too bad they did not gave money back guarantee.
* Rimantas Petrauskas Very interesting information. thanks
* Each week sees me in my linked account. Countless e-mails. the most scamers.
* Sonia De Castro
* RE : Introduction VitalMarkets
We are a broker registered with the New Zealand FSP number : FSP332186.Su management is through currency or some more instrument? …
* Sonia De Castro
May 12 Sonia De Castro ( Replied )
Replied Introduction VitalMarkets
Orpinell Dear Sir , First wanted agradercele your agreement to the contact form . I am the head of development …
* IntegerFX Forex Trading Online
IntegerFX Forex Trading Online invites you to …
I would like to invite you to join my group on LinkedIn . – IntegerFX
* Lisa Scott ♛
May 5 Lisa Scott ♛
RE : Introduction BelforFx
Dear Luis , is of great interest to expand BelforFx Sites within which is Mexico . So you …
Lisa Scott ♛
May 2 Lisa Scott ♛ ( Replied )
Replied RE : Introduction BelforFx
* VICTOR Ibarreche
April 28 VICTOR Ibarreche ( Replied )
Replied RE : IronFX
Dear Luis , I wanted to know if you work with a broker ? and also if you managed forex accounts ? Regards On
Luis, yes, I know what you mean. I get those too. Mostly from Forex agents or whatever they are call themselves. Everyone of them offers the best lowest spread, etc 🙂
Excellent blog Rimantas! This is the kind of information that newcomers to the world of FX trading would find very useful. Regarding MyFXBook….I’d just reinforce the point you made that when ‘Open Trades’ are kept ‘Private’, it’s a sure sign they want to prevent you from seeing the real picture. It usually means the account is drawn down hugely with trades that are losing heavily. As you rightly said….anyone can generate a nice equity curve on their balance by simply letting losing open trades stay open.
John, thanks for the comment. It is truly a shame how vendors hide huge floating loss and of course FX newbies do not know the potential risk of that and that this could even exit.
Hello to all, the contents present at this web site are truly remarkable for people knowledge, well, keep up the good work fellows.
I need to to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoyed every little bit of it. I have you saved as a favorite to look at new things you post…
Hi, you said it’s easy to create MT4 statement by using html, can it used to create MT4 deposit withdrawal? I have seen a mt4 printscreen show huge gain in a day like deposit $10 withdraw 10000 in a day and I don’t think it’s photoshopped
Hi. Not sure what you mean exactly, but if you mean if it is possible to change Withdrawal/Deposit numbers in a HTML statement then yes, it is truly possible.
Open that HTML statement in a Notepad and just change them. Then load that HTML back in your browser and you will have it.
It is more difficult to do with the MT4 statement picture graph of course, but yet it is possible as well.
So is there an indicator or an EA that can make you some $$$ based on technical or fundamental analysis that really works is the question that I would like someone to dawn me!
Tom, I would trust signal providers more these days, specially those who publish live real money account performance that is verified by myfxbook or mql5 market. I will be publishing new post tomorrow about best MQL5 signal providers that I have found, so you might want to take a look at that.
As about indicators, I hardly believe there is an indicator that you could trust 100% completely without additional analysis. You know you have to “feel the market” to be a good trader and indicators are just additional tools to help and do some work for you.
Are they truly worth investing?
Heard that some have a few accounts and publish only those that are profitable.
Regards
David.
David, there are thousands of websites selling products and it’s truly sometimes difficult to detect if it’s scam of not. That’s why I am writing an eBook right now that teaches how to detect Forex scam products. There are lots of ways to sell scam products online and Forex is very popular niche to do this.
it would be perfect if i can read more about Fapturbo. They are king of spam. Curiosity that are they king of scam as well. i just sign up an email to everyday-fx.com (everyday bullsh** on facebook ads) to receive free-winning-indicator as they saying. Guess what, they give me a link to Fapturbo2.
Overall, great article. Especially to point out a seriously scammer: mt4forexrobot.com . They are trying so hard to scam someone but can they really get what they want. Nowadays traders are smarter and have more experiences i guess.
Keep it up Rimantas, let refresh forex marketplace to protect forex trader as well as forex vendor business.
Peter, thanks. Doing my best.
I guess it would take a lifetime to investigate every Forex scam out there. So what I am planning to do is to create a step-by-step guide which will help traders to identify if some product or website is a scam or not.
Admiring the time and energy you put into your blog and in depth information you offer. It’s good to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same unwanted rehashed information. Excellent read! I’ve saved your site and I’m adding your RSS feeds to my Google account.
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Thanks. I am glad you like it 😉
Wow, that is some amazing research. Indeed, the world of robots and signals is shady and hard to navigate. Your post here certainly helps people see through the mumbo jumbo…
Keep on the great work and good luck with your book!
Yohay, thanks for nice words and for taking the time to stop by 😉
Regards,
Rimantas Petrauskas
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My developer is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using Movable-type on numerous websites for about a year and am anxious about switching to another platform. I have heard great things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress content into it? Any kind of help would be really appreciated!
Stacie, not sure if there are tools for that, but if you Google I am sure you will find some. If it’s not your area of expertise I would just leave it to your developer anyway.
Regards,
Rimantas
Today, I went to the beach with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is completely off topic but I had to tell someone!
Off-topic, but still hilarious story 🙂 hope she is fine now.
Yes, I am one of the victims here.
I purchased mt4 fx robot last month and ever since lost on Real account as well as Demo account.
Not a single day this robot give positive result.
When asked for refund, they kept asking/suggesting to use different brokers and so on. Which I blindly did of course to see how the USD2000 robot works.
And now after i found this website, I know for sure that I have been cheated by this people.
Thank you
Hello,
sorry to hear that you have been cheated. I suggest that you try to get a refund by any means and as fast as possible. If you have used VISA credit card, go to your bank and ask to do a CHARGE BACK on that VISA credit card transaction.
Wish you luck to get your money back.
I will be releasing a new eBook soon to my subscribers about how to identify Forex scams. You might want to read that. It will give more information on these types of scams.
Regards,
Rimantas Petrauskas
They make it difficult to use Credit card and asked to pay by Neteller instead.
Now they stop replying the email. I guess they are really a hardcore scammer.
Your goal is to breed all the different dragons available to you and enter combat against other player’s dragons. fbkkfbeaacdc
Dear John, i am not fighting with anyone and that is not my goal. I am just tired of all these scams.
Not sure if i understand your point completely though.
Regards, Rimantas Petrauskas
Wow, great review and i have read every single word of it!
You are right, i have been trying to make money on Forex for over 3 years now, never worked.
I spend a lot of time and money on systems and/or signal services, and never worked.
After reading this article, i have a feeling you are the real deal 🙂
what do you suggest i do? Give it up, or keep looking, or .. ?
Thanks,
Kev
Dear Kevin,
thanks for your feedback. I never suggest to give up, because it’s the easiest thing to do, but when you keep looking be sure to not fall for Forex scams.
Actually I have just the thing for you right now. My new eBook that explains how to identify Forex scams and you can get it right here:
http://www.stopforexscams.com
Have a great day 😉
Regards,
Rimantas Petrauskas
This world is filled with fraud people. So do a lot of research, read reviews and do transaction when satisfied.
Hi my name is Irfan Gujjar.I’m freaking pissed off about Ironfx. I am a client of them and trying to withdraw from last 2 months. First they said that the payments department
is overloaded, then they said that since I made a lot of profits then compliance has to approve my withdrawal.How the hell are they processing so long time?
And IronFX boasts on their website that they have ASIC, Cysec, FCA, Eurex license and membership. It’s a big BS.
Can anybody here share their experience with withdrawing profits from IronFX. I would very much appreciate it. I’ve just been fool not withdrawing earlier from Iron.
Hi, I am really sorry to hear you have that much trouble with this broker. Personally I do not work with them. I hope you’ll find a way to get you money back. You should contact Forex Peace Army about this. They might help you if they will post your case publicly.
Goodness, that is some stunning exploration. Without a doubt, the universe of robots and signs is shady and difficult to explore.
Continue the considerable work and good fortunes with your boot
thanks
Dear Rodny, thanks for your feedback and your comment.
Regards,
Rimantas Petrauskas
Very good article! We are linking to this particularly
great article on our site. Keep up the good writing.
thanks for the information
kindly post the below url in scam listand its arbitrage robot they sell which doesn’t work in live markets and new traders are cheated by these idiots..
http://mt5forexea.com/
It’s the same EA already mentioned in this article. It has many website URLs and these scammers are all over the place.
I have added the URL you sent me. Thanks
Great article! I was finding out more about forex robots and their scams. Thanks for sharing your ideas. Now I am better informed of the warnings about what to look out for. I agree with you that is hard to tell which forex robot works if you do not purchase it and try it. Backtest are important but past data do not determine future results. Hence, running on demo accounts or taking small positions on live accounts might produce more reliable results.
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Thanks!
very useful article …thank you very much
It’s very informative. Thanks for sharing Rimantas Petrauskas.