Beware! BexStock 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.
BexStock Claims to be an established broker with over four decades of history and operations in a number of major financial centers. In reality, however, this is a false facade that collapses very easily with minimal scrutiny of these grandiose claims.
At very first glance, considerable efforts have been made to make the site look legitimate. There is a detailed fabricated history of the company dating back to 1977 and even a warning about scammers using the company’s “good name”. But the schemes included in terms and conditions, the conflicting information and missing features on the site quickly show that these are just another scammers you shouldn’t trust with your money.
BEXSTOCK REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
BexStock is presented as a brand of BS Asia Pte. Ltd, a company headquartered in Singapore. Contact addresses are given for alleged subsidiaries in Germany, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong. However, the terms and conditions state that the agreement between the customer and the company “shall be understood according to the laws of the Republic of Marshall Islands”.
Тhis is the most common scheme used by fraudsters – a contact address is given in well-known and respected financial centers, but the actual registration of the company is in an offshore zone, where its activities are not subject to any supervision and regulation. The Marshall Islands is one of the favourite bases of such fraudsters because this country does not even have a financial regulator.
We still check the records of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and there is no licensed broker under the name BS Asia or BexStock. The same applies to the registers of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), the Australian Securities and Exchanges Commission (ASIC), Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HMA) and Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). And more important than anything, BaFin posted a special warning in May 2021 that bexstock.com is just another incarnation of a fraudulent scheme that previously used the platforms investexp.de and beexp.de.
If you want to try your abilities and luck in the world of forex trading, it is highly advisable to do so through legitimate brokers operating under the supervision of powerful regulatory bodies such as Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in UK or the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), Clients of these brokers receive protections such as negative balance protection and segregation of the client’s funds from the broker’s funds, as well as guarantee for their funds in case the broker goes bankrupt. These guarantees amount to up to EUR 20,000 EU and 85,000 GBP in the UK.
Another good option are brokers regulated by the Australian Securities and Exchanges Commission. While there is no investment guarantee fund in Australia, companies operating there must also meet significant conditions, including net capital of at least AUD 1 000 000. In the EU and the UK the minimum net capital requirement is EUR 730 000.
BEXSTOCK TRADING SOFTWARE
BexStock claims to run the most popular trading platform in the industry – MetaTrader 4 (MT4). However, there are no download links on the website, and at the time of writing this review it was not possible to create an account. So we can’t confirm if this statement is true.
There are more than enough regulated and legitimate brokers who offer MT4 experience to their customers. MT4’s primacy is no coincidence because the platform offers a plethora of useful features and tools, including the ability to design and implement customized bots for real-time automated trading and strategy backtesting.
BEXSTOCK TRADING CONDITIONS
Despite the diligence put into some parts of the site, it appears this scam is still a work in progress. As already mentioned, the registration system does not work at all, and the links to the “Client Area” lead to blank pages.
The main page of the BexStock’s website describes three types of accounts – Bronze, Silver and Gold, with a minimum deposit of USD 250 to USD 1,000. This is comparable to industry’s standard levels. The same goes for the leverage offered – 1:30, which is actually in line with EU and UK regulatory requirements. Here BexStock also promises variable spread of 0.1 pip, which in theory is a very advantageous level.
Elsewhere on the website, however, three completely different account types are listed – Mini, Classic and Premium. They have a spread of 3 pips, which is double the average for legitimate brokers. The leverage specified here is 1:200, which exceeds the levels allowed by the major regulators. High leverage creates the opportunity for higher profits, but also carries increased risk, which regulators deem unacceptable for retail traders.
BexStock also says it offers all its customers bonuses – something also no longer allowed by regulators in EU, UK, Australia and the US.
BEXSTOCK DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
According to the text of the Terms and Conditions, the withdrawal of money related to the aforementioned bonuses is subject to significant trading volume requirements. In one place it is stated that this volume amounts to “making of USD 500 000 worth of trades in round turns for each USD 50 bonus offer granted” – i.e. USD 10,000 for every bonus dollar. In one of the following paragraphs, however, the requirement is already twice as high – minimum trading volume of USD 20,000 for every bonus dollar. The client is allowed to withdraw funds from the account before reaching the minimum trading volume, but doing so will forfeit the bonus amount.
There is also a monthly tax of USD 36 for inactive accounts.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Scammers who promise easy money without any effort are nothing new, especially on the internet. But given the excitement around bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in recent years, malicious actors have run rampant more than ever, capitalizing not only on people’s desire to solve their financial woes with a magic wand, but also ignorance and misunderstanding of how blockchain and complex financial instruments actually work.
If your curiosity is stirred by one of the many flashy websites promising easy riches, and you provide your contacts, you will soon be contacted by skillful and persuasive scammers who will convince you to start with a relatively small and “risk-free” investment. If you agree to this, you will be transferred to even more skilled at convincing scammers, who will persuade you to invest even more. Any money you give to such people is money you are unlikely to get back.
Any attempt to withdraw deposits or alleged profits will be hampered by numerous and significant fees, as well as harsh and often prohibitive conditions written into the terms and conditions – such as high trading volume requirements, unexpected “taxes”, or withdrawal fees as high as 10% or even 20% of your funds.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
Recovering money you have given to fraudsters is difficult and often impossible. Fraudsters always want you to provide them with documents such as a copy of your ID and proof of address so that they can claim that it is a legitimate transaction, agreed voluntarily between both parties. If the transaction is made by credit or debit card, you can request a cashback and hope for the best, but transactions via wire transfer or cryptocurrencies are not refundable. It is important not to trust online offers from people who offer to recover your money in exchange for an upfront payment, because this is also a well-known scam.
