Beware! Alph Capital is an offshore broker! Your investment may be at risk.
RECOMMENDED FOREX BROKERS
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Open trading accounts with at least two brokers.
Alph Capital says to be a UK broker focused on the crypto market. And they even try to leave the impression that they function as an actual crypto exchange. That, however, is not the case. What they offer are several CFDs on crypto coins like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, NEM, Dash, IOTA and Monero, all of that on a web based trading platform, which we were not able to check as there is no demo account available.
Trading conditions put aside, however, our main concern with Alph Capital is their regulatory status. Not only that the website is not licensed, but actually there is a fresh warning issued by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK about them. Please read the following paragraphs of our review to get more details.
Alph Capital regulation & safety of funds
We are not sure about the name of the company behind the website, but Alph Capital says to be based in the UK. If a broker is based in the UK, it will have to be registered with the local financial regulator – the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), that issues licenses to all companies providing financial services in the Kingdom.
After we searched for Alph Capital in the FCA register, it turned out that not only Alph Capital is not regulated, but also there is a warning issued by FCA against Alph Capital, saying that the website is actually a “clone” of a legit FCA regulated company – Alph Capital Limited (www.alphcapital.com), which has absolutely nothing to do with Alph Capital.
Bear in mind that trading with unregulated brokers has always been associated with a unreasonably high risk of falling a victim of a scam.
Alph Capital deposit/withdrawal methods and fees
Alph Capital accepts payments in lots of ways, including credit cards like VISA, MasterCard American Express and Discover, as well as PayPal and bank wire. The broker, however, does not accept payments with Skrill and that is notable, as according the new anti-scam policy adopted by the payment company in October, only brokers with legit licenses can use its services.
As we noted above, Alph Capital is a low credibility, unregulated broker.
How does the scam work?
You may be surprised to learn that scam artists are pretty well organized and employ lots of resources to get you into their net. For example they use the services of call centers, usually based in South East Asia or Eastern Europe, and the so called robo scam websites like Crypto Revolt and Bitcoin Evolution, , which are especially designed to hook you with some irresistible offer, usually about making you rich in a week – everything completely risk free, and all you have to do in the beginning is to leave your e-mail and phone.
Note that after you do that almost immediately you will transferred to the website of a unregulated, offshore, scam broker, where you will finally have to deposit your first 250 USD.
Besides, if you do register a trading account with the scammers, the guys running the robo scam website will get their commission.
Also, take a note that at first you will be quite pleasantly surprised by your trading results. Your trades will go amazingly well and pretty soon the money in your account will more than double. That, however will be just part of the scam. Your account will be manipulated with the sole purpose to make you more prone to the idea of investing a larger sum.
And your “senior account manager” will advise you exactly this – to deposit at least 10 000 USD, in case you want to start making some real money at last.
And if you invest those money as well, chances are you will not realize you have been scammed until the very minute you decide to withdraw some of your cash. Scammers will plainly refuse to pay you on the grounds you have not met some minimum trade volume requirement, probably linked to your welcoming bonus, you have so carelessly accepted when you opened your account in the first place. Certainly it could be something else, but the bottom line will be the same – you will not see a single dollar back.
What to do if scammed?
Possibly the only option you have, if you have lost money to online scammers, is to file for a charge back with your credit card company. The good news here is that you will be able to do that with both VISA and MasterCard within 540 days. That is according the new anti- scam policy adopted by the two companies late last year.
If by any chance you have given away tour banking details like a credit card number or an online banking password, immediately cancel your credit card and change your online banking password.
And finally, do not trust the “recovery agencies”. Those people will not recover you a single penny, but after collecting some upfront payment, will leave you even more miserable than before.
