Beware! Forextk 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.
Forextk is a curious case – their website looked very illegitimate but the broker actually turned out to be licensed. However, it was licensed by the financial regulatory body of Vanuatu, VFSC, which is hardly the strictest authority. The broker also provides access to its own MetaTrader 5 terminal and offers decent conditions – tight spreads, cheap trading accounts, and reasonable leverage. However, the information about those conditions was hardly comprehensive. Moreover, the deposit methods the company accepts were shady, to say the least.
This broker might or might not be a scam – but we would not advise you to take any risks when your money is at stake. Better check out big, established brokerages who offer similarly good conditions.
Forextk REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
Forextk is licensed by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission. This makes them an offshore broker – but also a licensed broker. The VFSC is hardly the strictest of regulators – all it requires is that a broker holds a local security bond of around $50 000. This is hardly a huge requirement but at least Forextk has been able to meet it.
However, the broker also states that it is registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and guided by the laws of this country. This is a red flag – St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a favorite location for scammers since the local financial regulator does not monitor the activities of forex brokers. Offshore brokers are also not obligated to report transactions that enable all sorts of illegal activities such as fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.
Choose your broker among those licensed in the UK, EU counties and Australia – the financial regulators of these countries are strict and brokers are asked to meet many requirements so that safety and transparency are ensured. All licensed brokers have to prove their financial stability by maintaining a minimum operational capital – €730 000 in the UK and the EU, and A$1 million in Australia. Client money must be kept in segregated bank accounts – this proves that your money will not mix with the broker’s funds and that the broker will not be using your investment for their own purposes. Negative balance protection prevents you from losing more money than you have in your account. Finally, UK and EU brokers are also obligated to participate in compensation funds. If such a broker becomes insolvent, each of their clients would be entitled to compensation – up to £85 000 in the UK and €20 000 in the EU.
Forextk TRADING SOFTWARE
Forextk actually offers access to one of the best, most popular platforms in the world of trading – MetaTrader 5.
The offer of decent software is always appreciated – however since we are not certain this broker is a secure investment choice, we would still recommend that you check out some of the many fully legitimate brokers offering MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 – but only with brokers, you are sure you can trust. Proving access to those is a bit pricier for the broker but offers far more opportunities to the client. Both MT4 and MT5 offer a wide variety of indicators, chart types, timeframes, order execution types, and pending order types. On top of that, you would be able to use Expert Advisors (pre-programmed trading bots) to track markets and trade automatically with the help of an algorithm. This is a feature the two platforms are actually famous for. You would also be able to create your own bots and indicators – from scratch or with the help of building blocks. To keep those bots running when your computer is off, you could purchase a VPS. Actually, you can purchase a ton of add-ons on the MT market. Lastly, you can set trading signals or subscribe to those set by others.
Forextk TRADING CONDITIONS
Forextk seems to offer pretty decent trading conditions. Although it was not stated specifically, we believe that the minimum amount of money you could deposit with this broker is $50 – this makes Forextk’s offer a very affordable one. However, there are countless licensed brokers who can open an account for you for even less.
The maximum leverage offered by Forextk is actually very reasonable – up to 1:30 on forex majors. This is almost unprecedented since it is almost a trademark for offshore brokers to offer very high leverage. Always be careful with your leverage settings – trading with leverage higher than you can handle could lead to huge profits and huge losses alike.
Finally, the broker offers “ECN accounts” – which in this specific case probably does not mean that you would be getting access to an actual ECN account. The spreads were indeed very low – 0.4 pips on EURUSD – but brokers usually charge commissions on such accounts. That is something Forextk has not mentioned anything about. High commissions might destroy your chances of earning decent money and make the good spread quite pointless.
Forextk DEPOSIT AND WITHDRAWAL METHODS AND FEES
Forextk accepts a few less conventional payment methods. The broker supports its own payment system TKpay as well as Stater – something that seemed like a crypto exchange service. Depositing with the more popular StickPay was also supposed to be an option but that deposit method was not really available – we were told that we had reached our daily deposit limit when we tried to use this payment solution although we have not deposited previously.
The broker only allows you to deposit in USD and EUR but also accepts countless popular cryptos – which might imply that they prefer crypto payments. This is a red flag since only scammers would urge you to deposit in crypto – such payments are both anonymous and irreversible which means that you would not be able to get a chargeback or trace the money. If this turns out to be the case here, keep one eye open.
The broker offers small bonuses – and although there did not seem to be a problem with those bonuses, we still urge you to be careful. Some scammers use bonuses as a way of preventing client withdrawals.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK?
This type of scam is really not that complicated – but it has proven to be quite effective and has managed to trick quite a few people. Given such schemes’ growing popularity, it is important to know how to avoid them – so reading the following paragraphs carefully is vital.
The scam starts with you seeing an ad on the Internet for a certain broker’s website. Such websites usually promise amazing conditions and extremely fast profits – but offer very little in terms of license and company information. However, sometimes scammers can be very elaborate in their promise – so you fall for it and provide them with a phone number or an email. There is another option – they might have stumbled upon your contact details somewhere and are the first to make contact. After that, a game of cat and mouse begins – you will be asked to open an account and make a deposit. Keep in mind that these are professional scammers who convince people to transfer money for a living – they will sweet-talk you into depositing by talking about profits and opportunities.
After that, you might indeed see profits and deposit even more money – but all of this is smoke and mirrors, scammers often manipulate results to make you transfer bigger amounts.
At some point, of course, you would want to withdraw your money – and the problems will start. Additional fees or unfulfilled clauses in the Terms and Conditions will appear, and you will be denied access to your money. At this point, you will probably discover something is wrong – and this is when the scammers will drop out of sight.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED?
There are a few things you could do if you discover you have been scammed. Chargebacks are possible in some cases depending on the payment method you have used to deposit. Both Visa and MasterCard allow such chargebacks within 540 days while bank transfers and cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible.
Make sure to change all banking passwords. If you have installed any remote access software, remove it immediately – scammers ask their victims to install such software under different pretexts but their endgame is to just get access to your banking accounts and steal even more money.
Notify authorities and share your story with as many people as possible – the more people know about such scams, the less they will fall victim to fraudulent schemes.
Last but not least – don’t trust any so-called “recovery agents” that offer to retrieve your money for a fee – this is just another type of scam, sometimes even conducted by the same people that stole your money in the first place.
