Beware! Riselink Forex 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.
The first impression that Riselink Forex wants to leave upon its reader is one of a professional and trustworthy broker. To that end they employ a sleek and colorful site. However, we believe that it is only a purposefully crafted illusion and Riselik Forex is neither of these things. This review will try and expose the many questionable details about the broker that ultimately convinced us that it is up to no good.
Riselink Forex regulations and safety of funds
Finding out where the broker was registered was, alas, no easy task. On the other hand finding out where it was based was, if anything, too easy. On the home page, Riselink Forex claims to be based in Hong Kong.
However, in the “About Company” page it states that it in based in Singapore. It also claims to have offices in London.
These contradictions made us wonder where the broker really operates from. At the bottom of the website there is a PO box address in the Samoan island of Apia. It is certainly unusual for a company to have their post arrive hundreds of kilometres away from their HQ. Therefore we think that it’s a safe assumption the broker is registered in Samoa.
The regulatory body of Samoa is the Samoan Central bank. Needless to say, Forex trading is not regulated there. Trading using unregulated brokers might seem like a way to make money fast and easy because of the large leverages they provide. In fact, Riselink Forex does not differ in that regard, with claims of a ridiculous 1:2000 leverage.
As alluring as that sounds, there are many risks when trading with unlicensed brokers. Regulatory bodies are in place to protect the trader and stop the activities of scammers. This is accomplished by strict supervision over the brokers and clauses that recuperate their customers’ capital in case the broker declares bankruptcy. For example in such an event the Financial Conduct Agency in the UK, or the FCA, offers to restore losses of up to 85 000 GBP. However such protections do not extend to customers of Samoan brokers.
On the note of regulation the broker’s website is predictably lax, with this to say:
We would not bet on the section getting updated anytime soon, as the company claims to have started in 2019. Surely if they actually had filed for a license and covered the requirements of a reputable agency they would have already updated the page. It seems like a cheap attempt to trick a customer who’s not paying attention into thinking Riselink Forex is more legitimate than it really is.
Riselink Forex trading software
Riselink Forex claims to provide the Metatrader 4 platform to its traders, and the download links on the website lead to a distribution of Metatrader 4 branded by a completely different company, Square link.
Another contradiction of Riselink Forex is exposed when we look at the EURUSD spread on the platform. The website claims to be using the “lowest spreads in the industry”, however this is not the case on the platform which has a spread of 2. In itself this is not really too out of the ordinary but it is a bit too wide of a spread for the most common currency pair, and definitely not the industry’s lowest.
Finally, the promised 1:2000 leverage is nowhere to be seem on the platform, at least in the demo account we used. The leverage we saw there goes up to 1:500.
Riselink Forex Deposit/withdrawal methods and fees
Riselink Forex presented us with another difficult task in discovering the deposit and withdrawal policy, as they simply do not have the TOS available anywhere on the site. There is no link to them on the home page and the “About Us” section was also suspiciously lacking in that regard. The only way we even know the company has any terms of service at all is because we were asked to agree to them when making an account. Of course there was no link to them at any stage of the account creation process.
We were able to figure out some really basic details of their deposit policy from a banner on the home page which tells us that they accept Visa and Mastercard, as well as some not as reputable payment options such as Perfect money and Bitcoin. Further, we determined that the minimum deposit amount is $10 from the FAQ section of the website. However, it presented us with the following curious recommendation:
Needless to say 2500 USD is quite a lot to start out trading with.
The withdrawal policy is as much a mystery as the deposit one. The only information on it we are able to make out comes from the home page which claims that there is no commission that the company imposes on. However, in this very review we have already pointed out two other contradictions between it and the reality of the broker’s service. It would seem that the page is just not grounded in reality. We leave it up to the viewer to decide if it is because it is outdated or for any other benign reason or to deceive on purpose. Secondly, even this bit of information is too vague. It is unclear if “Zero commission” means there is no commission on the deposits, the winnings, any possible bonuses the broker provides, etc. Furthermore, since we have no way of knowing what the TOS actually state we cannot know if any of our money is subject to any fees. In fact, a lot of brokers impose fees for all sorts of things – withdrawals and sometimes fees if the account hasn’t been active in a certain amount of time, to name two.
How does the scam work?
The danger of this scam, is that it is really simple to create several ads that promise quick winnings and huge profits, or some obscure or occult secret key to understanding the financial markets. When someone clicks on them they see a website like this one that looks legitimate on first inspection promising them more of the same. Many people see through the website for what it is, but the ones that do not make an account. When they give their phone number they start getting calls from people claiming to be an authority figure, like an Account manager. These figures demand one thing and one thing only – that the victim deposits as much money as they can talk them into before realizing they are being scammed. The scammed person is just told to sit back and relax as their capital grows. In fact the scammers do not care to trade with that money as they make their profits from the deposits themselves and not any actual trades they perform.
What to do when scammed?
The sad reality of the situation is that there simply isn’t much to do in the case of getting scammed. If you have payed with a credit card you can issue a chargeback withing 540 days of the transaction. However if you have used another payment option you are not likely to see your money ever again.
One last warning, sometimes you may get contacted by a person pretending to be a representative of a recovery agency of some sort. Do not send them any money. Despite what they say they are just the final stage of the scam and do not seek to restore any lost deposits. They will require an advance fee, which they will promptly take and never contact you again.
