Beware! Onecapital Invest 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.
Onecapital Invest claims to be a regulated forex broker operating in some of the leading global financial centers. But it fails to convince us that these claims are true. Careful inspection reveals beyond doubt that Onecapital Invest is a scam that has no legal authorization to offer any financial services. It would be a very bad decision to trust your money to this shady website.
ONECAPITAL INVEST REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
Onecapital Invest provides a London address and claims to be regulated not only by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) but also by leading regulators in the European Union such as CySEC and the German BaFin.
But even a quick glance at the home page shows us that this could not be true. The reason for this is that Onecapital Invest is completely anonymous. A licensed broker operating in highly regulated jurisdictions such as the UK and EU is required to provide detailed information about the company that owns and operates it.
The Terms and Conditions also do not state the name of a legal entity. However, there we find another contradictory statement – that the agreement with the coinset is subject to Estonian law. A check in the databases of Estonian Financial Supervision Authority (EFSA), FCA, CySEC and BaFin shows that there is no authorised broker whose name includes “Onecapital Invest” or which uses the domain onecapitalinvest.com.
The Terms and Conditions also state that Onecapital Invest offers various bonuses – but EU and UK brokers are prohibited from giving bonuses.
When choosing a broker through which to invest in the financial markets, you should not only make sure that all the information required by law is available, but also that this information is true. Always check that the company is indeed on the records of the specified regulator and that the domain used is among those officially approved for the particular broker.
Under no circumstances should you trust your money to such anonymous websites full of false and contradictory information. Instead, you can turn to one of the many companies that really work under the supervision of respected regulatory bodies like Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) or Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK. As their customer you will enjoy a number of guarantees including negative balance protection and guarantee for your funds if the broker goes bankrupt, which goes up to EUR 20,000 in EU and 85,000 GBP in the UK. Regulations in the UK and EU include some important measures designed to improve investor protection and promote market integrity and transparency, such as transaction reporting. Regulated brokers are also required to segregate their operational funds from the client’s money.
ONECAPITAL INVEST TRADING SOFTWARE
The Onecapital Invest website does not give specific information about the most important tool for forex trading, the trading software. After registering an account, we get access to a download link for the Metatrader 4 (MT4) platform, and for a rudimentary web trader that is not the browser version of MT4.
Onecapital Invest does not provide login credentials to the MT4 platform and the software itself is registered in the name of another broker, Finansys FX. This is actually another scam website that we have reviewed. It’s not clear if this is the actual owner of Onecapital Invest, but it wouldn’t surprise us – Finansys FX is registered in the Marshall Islands, an offshore zone with no financial regulator.
So Onecapital Invest actually gives access only to the mentioned web platform, which has only the most basic features and cannot be compared with advanced platforms like MetaTrader.
But even if Onecapital Invest had a more convincing platform, that would not make this website credible. Fake brokers use trading software to mislead their victims that their money is really being invested. But this trade is entirely sham.
There are more than enough licensed brokers offering clients the MT4 experience and/or the newer version of the software 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.
ONECAPITAL INVEST TRADING CONDITIONS
Onecapital Invest claims to offer trading in stocks, currencies, indices and commodities, but provides no information on the terms of this trade. 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.
The only parameter specified on the website is leverage up to 1:500. This is in fact further evidence that Onecapital Invest could not really operate in the jurisdictions in which it claims. 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.
ONECAPITAL INVEST DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
The logos of a variety of payment methods such as Wire Transfer, Visa, MasterCard, Skrill, PayPa Sofort and GiroPay can be seen on the website. But the deposit feature is not active unless the account is verified by providing a copy of identification documents. Scammers often advertise conventional payment methods, but in reality only use cryptocurrencies because they do not allow refunds and chargebacks. If you are interested in licensed brokers that also accept cryptocurrencies as a means of payment, take a look at this list.
In the Terms and Conditions we find clauses that almost guarantee that it will not be possible to withdraw the money you made the mistake of depositing in Onecapital Invest. Firstly, if an account has received a bonus, it can only withdraw profits once it reaches a minimum traded volume of 30 times the bonus plus deposit.
And even more worrying, Onecapital Invest charges a whopping 10% levy on accounts that withdraw funds before they reach “200 in turnover”. It doesn’t specify 200 what – presumably they mean 200 lots, i.e. 20,000,000 currency units. Such vague and extortionate clauses are typical of fake brokers. In fact, we have encountered these exact clauses dozens of times. The same wording has been used by numerous scammers we have reviewed, for example SmartCapital.Fund, CTsolutions, RockFordFX, METAfmi and Wise 4X.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Many people have a desire to invest in the financial markets but lack the necessary knowledge and experience. This makes them a potential victim of the many internet scammers posing as brokers and investment intermediaries. These types of scams have exploded alongside the cryptocurrency boom.
If you trust such a website and give them your personal information, you will be contacted by experienced scammers who will entice you with promises of easy profits. The scammers usually offer to take over all aspects of investing for you, sometimes even prompting you to install remote access software on your personal computer. After investing an initial low amount, they will convince you that you are already making incredible profits and urge you to invest more.
But you will never get the promised profits, nor will you be able to get your money back. If you want to withdraw funds from your account, you will find that you have suddenly lost everything in the market, or that you have to meet impossibly high traded volume requirements, or that you have to pay huge fees. It is also possible that fraudsters simply disappear because they hide behind fake names and shell companies in offshore areas that are not subject to any control and regulation.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
One of the few options to get at least some of your money back in such a situation is to ask for a chargeback. But this is only possible if you have used a credit or debit card for the transaction. Scammers typically use cryptocurrencies or dubious e-wallets that make it impossible to get your money back.
Under no circumstances should you trust people and websites that promise to magically refund your lost money for an upfront fee. This is also a well established scam. You may even fall victim to the same scammers again.
