If you currently invest, or you’re thinking about getting into investing, knowing about the most common scams is so important. Whilst there are very talented teams of investment fraud lawyers who can help to recover money, you don’t want it to get to this stage if you can avoid it. So, spend some time learning about these scams and how to avoid them to keep your money safe and make your investments a success!
Forex Scams
First up we have forex scams, where scammers will utilise the platform design for the trading of different currencies. Modern scams are very advanced and this can make it difficult to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake, particularly in terms of the platforms that you’re coming across. If you put your money into a scam platform, it will highly be stolen. The signs to look out for to avoid forex scams is that a scam trading platform won’t connect to legitimate financial institutions, they won’t have customer service, there is either no address or it’s offshore, or they’re not registered as a money service business. It’s also common for you to be approached by “brokers” offering get rich quick solutions, which is also something you should definitely avoid.
Crypto Scams
In the world of cryptocurrency, scams are also very common. One of the most common is people approaching you as “investment managers”, promising to help you make money quickly with it usually sounding too good to be true, and asking for an upfront fee. Sometimes they may even live up to their promises, encourage you to give them more for the investment, then you’ll never hear from them again. Another common crypto scam is fake celebrity endorsements, imposing celebrity faces on fake accounts or ads, they generate trust and then result in people losing a lot of money. Crypto scams are also increasingly advanced as the industry is around for longer, so regularly reading about updates, new scams, what has changed and red flags to look out for is important to keep your money safe and to invest wisely. Learning about investing is not just a tick box that you can complete, but an ongoing process if you want to be a successful investor.
Rug Pull Scams
Across the world of investing, rug pull scams happen regularly and can be dangerous. It involves a group of “investors” investing in a particular area, such as an NFT or stock, which increases the value and encourages other people to invest. Then, they will all “pull the rug” on the investment, which they’ve made a lot of money from and then they leave the remaining investors to pick up the pieces, losing a lot of money. They’re left with an investment with no value, usually without options to recover the lost money as they’re technically still invested. This has happened across all different forms of investment, so you need to be wary of investments that have significantly increased in value recently or are very new to the market.
