Beware! Octafxtrade24 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.
Octafxtrade24 is an extremely suspicious website that unconvincingly presents itself as a licensed forex broker. It is a completely anonymous platform that does not offer the services it claims and has the obvious goal of scamming you out of your money. In summary, at all costs stay away from Octafxtrade24.
REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
The first and most worrying signal that the Octafxtrade24 are fraudsters is that nowhere on the website, in the terms and conditions or on the client platform is it stated who the legal entity behind the operation actually is. This is completely unacceptable for any legitimate business, let alone a broker you have to trust with your funds.
There is no company type listed (LLC, Inc., or other) even on the supposed license certificates posted on the website. The certificates in question are from offshore zones Belize, Mauritius and the United Arab Emirates, and the latter is not even for brokerage. The licenses from Belize and Mauritius are from 2013 and 2012, so even if they were genuine, they have long expired. Checking the records of the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius and the International Financial Services Commission of Belize shows that there is no licensed broker with the name Octafxtrade24.
If you want to try your luck and skill with investing in the capital markets, you can do so through some of the brokers operating under the supervision of powerful regulatory bodies such as Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
These brokers must meet strict requirements for operational transparency and financial stability and to keep customer money segregated from company money in separate bank accounts. They must also provide clients with negative balance protections and are also required to participate in a guarantee fund that covers up to EUR 20,000 of customer investments in the EU and up to GBP 85,000 in the UK. Regulations in the EU and UK also include some important measures designed to improve investor protection and promote market integrity and transparency, such as transaction reporting.
TRADING SOFTWARE
Octafxtrade24 claims on its website that it offers an ”award-winning platform”. After logging into the client portal, however, it can be seen that it is a pretty standard web-based software. The platform has the basic features of customizing charts and using comparative and technical indicators. However, it lacks buy and sell functions, so it is impossible to check the most important features of a trading platform. Nowhere is it specified whether these functions become active if money is deposited into the account. Given the whole picture, however, it is doubtful.
Legitimate brokers offer clients a wide selection of quality trading software. Typically, this includes the industry’s most popular platforms, MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). These platforms provide a variety of options for customization, multiple account usage, designing and implementing custom scripts for automated trading and backtesting trade strategies.
TRADING CONDITIONS
On its website, Octafxtrade24 describes five different account types -Starter, Classic, Pro, Executive and Premium. The lowest minimum deposit is USD 350. However, the text of the Terms and Conditions specifies a completely different set of accounts – Standard, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond.
It is particularly worrying that these different account types are mentioned in the withdrawal policy section. This may be an oversight in copying text from other fraudulent schemes, but it may also be a trap set for the customer. In any case, this is another signal that you should never trust your money to Octafxtrade24.
The website promises a spread between 1.2 and 1.9 pips, which is in line with the industry standards. At the same time the trading platform shows a spread of just 0.2-0.5 pips. Such low levels can rarely be seen event at a legitimate broker.
Information on another key trading metric, leverage, is nowhere to be found. Bonuses are included in the terms and conditions for all account types. This is another thing that demonstrates that this is not a licensed broker, as all major regulators in the EU, UK and US no longer allow bonuses and promotions.
DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
Octafxtrade24 claims to work with established financial institutions such as Citibank, Barclays, UBS and PWC, but like everything else on this website, it’s a lie. There is a bank transfer option in the deposit menu, but it is not active. The only choice is between different types of cryptocurrency – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance and Tether.
While cryptocurrencies have legitimate applications, scammers and criminals like to use them because they are difficult to trace and, most importantly, not refundable. If you’re interested in legitimate brokers that accept Bitcoin, check out this list.
Octafxtrade24’s terms and conditions include one often used trap for the customer. If the account has received any of the aforementioned bonuses, withdrawals of any money can only be made after executing a significant minimum trading volume. In this case, 30 times the value of the bonus.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
The online space is full of ads promising easy money. They sound too good to be true, because they are not – they are outright scams. Many of these fraudsters pose as brokers and take advantage of the general public’s ignorance of the capital markets.
If you give your contact details to one of the flashy sites promising to make you rich, you will be contacted by experienced scammers who will start convincing you to “invest” in their scheme. Initially they will ask for a small amount, say USD 250 or USD 500. If you agree, they will begin to persuade you to give them larger sums.
However, your money will never be truly invested in the market, and you will not be able to receive either the supposed profits or the money from your deposit. Your attempts to withdraw your money will be blocked by deliberately confusing clauses in the terms and conditions. Some of the most commonly used traps are extremely high minimum trading volume requirements or withdrawal fees equal to 10%, 20% or more of your funds.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
It is very important not to rush into trusting people on the internet who offer to magically refund your money for a fee. These are also scammers, and they may even be the same ones who scammed you in the first place.
If you have made the transfers using credit or debit card, you can claim a chargeback. Visa and MasterCard allow this to be done within 540 days. However, such a request may not be approved if you have given the fraudsters documents such as a copy of an ID and proof of address. This will allow them to claim that the transaction is legitimate and approved by both parties. Wire and cryptocurrency transfers unfortunately are not refundable.
