Beware! Aextrade 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.
Aextrade is a glaring proof that entering the world of financial trading poses many risks for people without sufficient experience. The biggest risk is coming across financial fraudsters posing as legitimate financial service providers. Aextrade is just such a scam. Let’s take a look at what are the clues by which you can recognize that it would be a bad idea to trust your money to this website.
AEXTRADE REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
The most important information about a financial services provider is its regulatory status. Licensed brokers provide detailed information about which company runs them, where it is based, which jurisdictions it is authorised in and which regulatory bodies oversee its activities.
Aextrade is not providing access to adequate legal documentation. The only document on the website is a Privacy Policy, the contents of which are entirely generic and do not name any legal entity or applicable jurisdiction.
According to the information in the footer on the website, the company behind Aextrade is called AEX Trade – without specifying the type of company (e.g. “Ltd”).
The website claims that this company is authorised and regulated by an institution called the European Security Exchange Brokerage. But no such institution exists. Aextrade provides a link to a supposed licence that leads to an anonymous website posing as this fake regulator.
The contact address listed on the website is in the Netherlands.
In order to operate as a broker in this jurisdiction, a company must hold the appropriate licence from the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). No authorised broker using this brand and domain can be found in the regulator’s database.
If you intend to invest in financial instruments, you should beware of the many fake brokers lurking online. Always check carefully whether the broker you choose really has the necessary licences. There are numerous benefits to working with a company that is truly authorised and supervised by a regulatory institution such as the 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.
AEXTRADE TRADING SOFTWARE
Aextrade claims to offer traders MetaTrader 4 (MT4), the most popular software in the industry. But the installation file, which can be downloaded from the website, is actually of the newer MT5 version of the software. But more importantly, this platform is not configured for Aextrade at all – it’s actually a demo platform for a broker named Admiral Markets.
This is a legitimate broker operating in Europe that has nothing to do with Aextrade. We have come across fake brokers illegally using the demo version of Admiral Markets’ software before – for example Dacland and CMV Capitals.
There are plenty of legitimate, regulated brokers who enable their clients to take advantage of MT4 and MT5‘s capabilities. 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.
AEXTRADE TRADING CONDITIONS
On the Aextrade website, we find descriptions of four types of trading accounts. These descriptions lack information about basic trading parameters such as spreads анд commissions.
The minimum deposit is 250 USD, an amount for which you could open an account with almost any licensed broker. Many leading brands in the industry even offer Micro and Cent accounts with a minimum deposit of just 1-5 USD.
Aextrade claims to offer leverage up to 1:200 – this would be impossible if it were truly a licensed broker in a European Union country. High leverage creates the opportunity for more significant profit, but correspondingly increases the risk of sudden and excessive losses. All leading regulators therefore restrict leverage for retail traders. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and accordingly all EU regulators limit leverage to 1:30 for major currency pairs and even lower levels for more volatile assets.
AEXTRADE DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
Aextrade claims that deposits can be made via wire transfer, payment processors such as Revolut and AllPaySoft, and cryptocurrencies. We were unable to confirm whether Aextrade actually uses these payment methods because our attempts to register an account resulted in an error message. Scammers of this type often advertise multiple payment methods, but only actually use cryptocurrencies.The reason for this is that digital currency transactions do not allow the defrauded to claim a refund.
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, Neteller or Sofort.
Aextrade claims not to charge transaction fees, but we have no good reason to believe anything on this website. The lack of a publicly available Terms and Conditions or Client Agreement means that scammers may have set many traps such as hidden fees and impossible-to-meet withdrawal terms.
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.
