Beware! InFluxFinance 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.

 

InFluxFinance proves the saying that first impressions can be deceiving. At a first glance, their website is quite decent and functional and contains a lot of the information you might need from a broker – the Terms and Conditions are not two pages long as with some other scam companies, for example. That was probably exactly the idea – to look legit enough to make you deposit. While they succeeded in the looks department, there are enough wrong things going on with this broker for us to advise you to not waste time and money on them. They are not reliable and you will probably not be the first person they scam if you decide to open an account.

InFluxFinance REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS

Just a quick web search gave us all the proof we needed to say you should not trade with InFluxFinance. The first result was not their website but news about the warning German regulator BaFIN has recently issued about the company.

What the regulator is basically saying here is that this company is not in any way allowed to offer financial services in Germany and BaFIN will be starting investigation on them.

A warning by a respected financial regulator is a big enough of a red flag but there is more. When looking into the address the broker has provided – 8 Copthall, Roseau Valley, 00152,
The Commonwealth of Dominica – we found out that it is quite notorious in the industry. There are countless scam companies registered there with client complains and scam warnings showing up as soon as we Googled the address. We have already reviewed some of these companies like EagleFX, CTXPrime and Sensetrade.cc and you can check those reviews out if you want to know more.

Working with an offshore broker is a big enough of a risk on its own. Not all offshore brokers are scammers but a lot of them are – scammers take advantage of the loose regulations in counties like Dominica, Vanuatu and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, to name a few, and count on the fact that their criminal activities will remain undetected. There are, of course, respected brokers that are registered at those locations because they want to offer more competitive terms to clients but those brokers usually hold a license elsewhere and already have built a good reputation. As a new trader, you probably won`t be able to establish which of the these two types you have before you, so better open an account with a regulated EU or UK broker.

Those brokers have to follow many rules to actually get licensed – like maintaining a minimum capital of €730 000 to prove they won`t be going bankrupt any time soon and participating in compensation schemes. So in case a broker does go bankrupt, their clients could get a compensation of a different size – up to €20 000 in the EU or £ 85 000 in the UK. Stick to such companies if you want to be sure your broker is following the law and answering to a reliable regulator.

InFluxFinance TRADING SOFTWARE

We were not really impressed by the web platform InFluxFinance had to offer – you even have to open an account for at least $3000 to get access to Expert Advisors, something platforms like MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 offer for free. Supposedly, the broker also uses MT5 but they did not provide a download link anywhere – the link in the platform led to a ‘file not found” message.

There is no talk of the other tools MT offers either – like the ability to back-test or create your own Expert Advisors and indicators.

InFluxFinance TRADING CONDITIONS

The minimum deposit for an account with InFluxFinance is $250 – a quite common price for a basic account but you don`t have to look too far to find a broker that will open an account for much less.

The leverage this broker offers is 1:200 – and that is yet another proof they could not legally be operating in the EU. For all EU brokers, the permitted leverage rate is 1:30 because of the simple reason that high leverage can lead to big losses, especially if you are just starting and don`t know a lot about trading.

We were not particularly impressed with the spreads the platform manifested either – 3.0 pips, sometimes a bit above. If you are hoping to turn a profit, such a wide spread can easily prevent you from doing so. The industry standard is 1.5 so a spread of double that is not the best option.

A curious thing we noticed when looking through account types, is that InFluxFinance claims to offer Direct Market Access – this means you would be able to directly interact with the order book and see how your offers affect the market. This is not something a lot of brokers can offer you and it is something that only the most renowned ones could actually do. We are not sure how true the offer is in relation to scammers like InFluxFinance.

InFluxFinance DEPOSIT/WITHDRAWAL METHODS AND FEES

The deposit and withdrawal methods we supposedly have at our disposal are Visa/MaterCard, bank transfer and Piastrix – a Russian e-wallet. When trying to deposit through the app though, we could only do so via Bitcoin or credit card – so that is one inconsistency a legitimate broker would not allow.

The mention of bonuses further cements our conviction that we are dealing with a scam scheme. The clause that you cannot access any money on the account – including your own – if you don’t reach a turnover 25 times the deposit plus the bonus, seems to have become almost mandatory for scammers as we also found it in InFluxFinance`s Terms and Conditions.

HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK?

It does not take a genius to design such a scam but they are surprisingly effective.

What usually happens is that you see an ad for a broker while scrolling on the Internet and get tempted by the opportunity to make some quick and easy money. The scammers` websites will show you pictures from the luxurious lifestyle you want to be leading and drown you in satisfied clients` testimonials. In reality, none of the promises you get would turn out to be true.

Once you have provided scammers with your contact details, the game is afoot. You will start getting calls and emails asking you to make a deposit. Soon enough you will have an account open, usually under incredibly good conditions, and you will probably be making money too. That is what the scammers want you to believe anyway – so you would invest even more money.

The problems start when you start trying to make a withdrawal. There will usually be some sort of complication preventing you from doing so like more and more additional fees and more and more waiting periods. The moment you start figuring out that something is not as it should be, the scammers will stop returning your calls and will disappear into the blue.

WHAT TO DO IF SCAMMED?

The most important thing now is to remain rational and not trust any “recovery agents” promising to retrieve your money for a small fee. This is just another type of scam, sometimes performed by the same people that ran off with your money in the first place.

What you should do is contact your bank or card provider and ask for assistance. If you were using a credit or debit card, you can file for chargeback within 540 days. Sometimes, if you have verified your account with the scammers by sending them a picture of your face and ID, they will use that to prove that you were indeed their client and invested voluntarily. In such cases, retrieving your money would be pretty impossible.

Make sure to change any passwords you gave the scammers access to. Contact authorities and share your story with your friends and acquaintances. Post about it on the Internet. The more people know about this type of scam, the harder it will be for scammers to lure in unsuspecting victims.

Top Forex Brokers

BrokerCountryRatingMin. DepositWebsite
US4.99/5$50 Click for a special offerWebsite

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *