Beware! Aston Bull 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.
Aston Bull presents themselves as a broker with a long history and an impressive portfolio that offers trading with a wide range of assets, including currency pairs, stocks, cryptocurrencies and commodities. In reality, though, this couldn’t be further from the truth – these are just another scammers, who didn’t even try too hard to look legit.
ASTON BULL REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
At first glance Aston Bull apply a common scheme for scammers – they give a contact address in a respectable financial centre, but have an actual registration in an offshore area with extremely limited or most often no regulation. The website declares that the company behind it, Aston Bull Limited, is a “registered company from the UK” and at the same time is a “Securities Dealer registered in Seychelles”, “authorised by the Financial Services Authority (FSA)”. In this case, however, even that’s not true, as evidenced by the number they gave for their supposed license: 00000. Surely enough, Aston Bull Limited is nowhere to be found in the list of security dealers and other entities, regulated by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority:
But even if Aston Bull were registered there, the regulations in place in that jurisdiction do not provide some basic protections for clients that have become standard in markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union – for example, segregation of client money from broker money in separate bank accounts. Needless to say, Aston Bull also has no registration with the institution regulating brokers in the UK – the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA):
If you have a desire to try your hand at the world of stock trading, we recommend choosing some of the brokers that are truly overseen by a well-respected institution like FCA. They are required to comply with strict standards, including providing clients with negative balance protection and participating in the Investment Compensation Fund, which guarantees up to 85,000 GBP of client’s funds.
Aston Bull’s website is obviously unfinished – many of the links are empty, including those, which are supposed to lead to the legal documentation and financial reports, showing how “Aston Bull Limited sets the standards for transparency in the financial markets”.
ASTON BULL TRADING SOFTWARE
Aston Bull claims to offer customers one of the most popular trading software – MetaTrader 4, with versions for Windows, Android, iOS and even Linux. The download links on the site are again empty, and after logging into the client system one can only find links to MT4’s mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as a download link for a non-custom version of the newer MetaTrader 5. After registration “account details” are sent by email, but they cannot be used for login into the supposed trading system, because they are incomplete (login id “0” and no password).
There are plenty of legitimate brokers, who offer their clients MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). These platforms are the most widely used in the industry for a reason, because they offer diverse functionality, including the use of custom scripts for automated trading.
ASTON BULL TRADING CONDITIONS
Aston Bull offers four types of accounts – “Standard” and “Standard Cent” with 100 USD minimum deposit, and “Pro” and “Vip” with 500 USD minimum deposit. The listed leverage is up to 1:1000, which is yet another signal that this could not be a legitimate broker, especially one operating in the UK. The Financial Conduct Authority’s regulation limits the leverage for retail traders to 1:30 for major currency pairs and even lower for more volatile assets.
There’s no information on the alleged spread offered, but that doesn’t really matter since we’re obviously talking about scammers.
ASTON BULL DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
The stated minimum deposit is $100, but the only payment method available in the system is “QR code”, and the only option for currency is Thai baht. At the time of writing this review, Aston Bull’s deposit and withdraw system is completely non-functional.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Unfortunately, for every licensed broker, there are dozens, if not hundreds of offshore registered and unregulated firms whose sole purpose is to scam gullible people. They recruit through attractive online ads, promising easy money for minimal effort. Once you have provided your details and they contact you, you fall into the hands of experienced scam artists, who confidently charm you until they con you out of real money in exchange for empty promises. Any attempts to recoup your initial deposit or additional investment will be blocked by confusing explanations and the catches written into the terms and conditions of the contract, such as hefty additional taxes and fees, amounting to 10% or 20% of your funds.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
The best chance to get at least some of your money back is to contact the bank or card company where the payment was made and ask for cashback. But there is no guarantee that your application will be approved, especially if you have provided your personal details like a copy of ID or proof of address to the scammers. It is important not to pay attention to offers from online companies to return your money in exchange for an upfront payment, because it is almost certain that they are also scammers.
