Beware! Vilt Trade 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.
Vilt Trade wants us to believe it is “a trading platform you can trust”. However, careful inspection of this website reveals that there is no basis for such trust. Vilt Trade is owned by a shady offshore company and has neither legal authorisation nor the necessary technological capacity to offer financial services. It would be a very poor choice to trust your money to Vilt Trade.
VILT TRADE REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
The home page of the website gives no indication who is behind Vilt Trade – no company name or contact address is given. That in itself is a big red flag. The information we find in the text of the Terms and Conditions does not inspire more confidence.
The owner of this alleged broker is listed as the company Swiss-SVG Holding ltd, based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).
There is a company by that name among those registered in the SVG, but that means nothing in terms of the safety of your money. SVG is an offshore zone that does not license brokers and does not regulate companies that engage in such activity. The local regulator, Financial Services Authority, warns about this as soon as you open its website.
Some large brokerage firms set up offshore subsidiaries, including in SVG. The aim is to be able to compete successfully in unregulated emerging markets. But these companies want to maintain a good brand name, which is why they provide guarantees and transparency even for clients of their unregulated divisions. This cannot be said of the Swiss-SVG/Vilt Trade, which is simply an unregulated company that may or may not offer the services it claims.
From what we have seen in preparing this review, we can state with full confidence that in this case we are dealing with fraudsters and not just an unregulated broker.
If you have decided to invest in financial instruments, it is highly recommended to use the services of a licensed broker. Depending on your location, it is advisable to choose a company that is regulated by an institution such as Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in US, Australian Securities and Exchanges Commission (ASIC), UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or some EU regulator like 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. In the EU and the UK, brokers must also participate in guarantee schemes that cover a certain amount of the trader’s investment if the broker becomes insolvent. These guarantees amount to up to 20 000 EUR in the EU and 85 000 GBP in the UK. However, the likelihood of such a bankruptcy is low because regulators also have significant net capital requirements that companies must maintain – EUR 730 000 in UK and Cyprus, AUD 1000 000 in Australia and at least 20 million USD in the United States.
VILT TRADE TRADING SOFTWARE
Vilt Trade promises a “handy platform” that can be used on any device. But after signing up for an account, we found that Vilt Trade has no trading software whatsoever. Obviously this is a low-effort scam relying on fooling people without any knowledge and experience in financial trading.
Legitimate brokers offer clients a wide selection of trading software, including desktop, mobile apps and web-based platforms. The most widely used platforms in the industry are MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). These platforms have established themselves as industry standard because they offer a wide range of features, including a variety of options for customization, multiple account usage, designing and implementing custom scripts for automated trading and backtesting trade strategies.
VILT TRADE TRADING CONDITIONS
When you visit the website of a legitimate broker you will find proposals for different types of trading accounts suitable for investors with different preferences, as well as detailed descriptions of trading parameters – minimum deposit, order execution method, tradable financial instruments, leverage, spread, swap, commissions, etc.
On Vilt Trade’s website, we find only sketchy and contradictory information about trading conditions. Insofar as Vilt Trade does not even have a trading platform, these parameters do not have real meaning.
Nowhere is there a description of account types, but after registration we are notified that our account is “Silver”. The website promises zero commissions and low spreads, but there is no information on what exactly the spreads are.
In terms of leverage he sees two different claims – that it goes up to 1:100 or 1:400. Regulated brokers do not offer such levels to retail traders as trading with high leverage carries risks of sudden and excessive losses. A maximum leverage of 1:30 is allowed in the European Union and the United Kingdom and 1:50 in the United States. Vilt Trade also offers bonuses, which is prohibited to regulated brokers.
VILT TRADE DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
The Terms and Conditions state that deposits and withdrawals can be made by credit/debit card or wire transfer. But at the time of writing this review, Vilt Trade’s deposit menu was not functional. In fact, the only active feature on the dashboard is that of verifying identity by providing a copy of an ID.
Legitimate brokers typically offer clients a wide choice of transparent payment methods, including bank transfer, credit/debit cards and established e-wallets such as PayPal, Skrill or Neteller. Fraudsters, for their part, often advertise conventional payment methods, but in reality only use cryptocurrencies that do not allow refunds.
The homepage of the website claims that there are no commissions for depositing and withdrawing funds. However, there is a clause in the Terms and Conditions that Vilt Trade may charge a fee of 50 EUR if it deems that the account activity was “insignificant” or the verification documents provided do not meet the requirements. In case of inactivity for 90 days, Vilt Trade will charge a fee of 5% of the account balance.
If the account has received a bonus, withdrawing funds becomes almost impossible. The client must meet vaguely described minimum traded volume requirements. According to the examples given, a bonus of 1,000 USD requires 10,000,000 currency units to be traded.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Unfortunately, the internet is full of scammers. In the age of cryptocurrencies, many of them pretend to be brokers and take advantage of people’s desire to get rich easily through financial instruments they don’t really understand.
Fake brokerage sites lure you in with promises to take on all the difficult and confusing aspects of investing for you. If you make contact with such sites, they will first convince you to make a small, “risk-free” investment of a few hundred dollars. Experienced scammers will then begin to persuade you to “invest” more and more money, and will even deceive you into believing that your initial investment is generating incredible profits.
But you will never see those profits or the money you deposited. These scammers hide behind fake names and offshore shell companies that are not subject to oversight and regulations like regulated brokers. They use cryptocurrencies or other shady payment methods that make refunding money difficult or often impossible. The terms and conditions of these sites are riddled with pitfalls that block withdrawals with impossible-to-fulfill conditions for minimum traded volume and extremely high fees reaching 10, 20 or more percent of the amount.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
If you find yourself in such a situation, you should be very careful not to fall into the clutches of other fraudsters while trying to recover your money. Offers from people on the internet who promise to get you your money back from scammers for an upfront fee are also one hundred percent scammers.
If you used a credit or debit card for the transactions to the scammers, there is some chance you can get your money back by requesting a chargeback. Visa and MasterCard allow this to be done within 540 days. But such a claim can be challenged if you have provided the scammers with documents such as a copy of your ID and proof of address.
