Beware! Investzo.com 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.
Investzo.com is a one-page site that tries its best to pass for a broker with the least amount of effort. It’s classic scammer broker behavior, and this is before we even start talking about the core of Investzo.com, i.e its alleged services and treatment of customers. What we found out was in no way unexpected. Read on to see for yourselves.
You know you are dealing with a scammer when it asks you for a passport number in the registration area. Don’t give away such precious details; the broker can uses them against you in the future.
With that said, we were not able to registered, and not because we refused to give away our passport information. The reason was that ,once completed, the registration process freezes without a way to complete it. We don’t know if the uissue is with us – as in the firm won’t accept us – or with the broker internal operations.
We had to rely on the poor and untrustworthy site for information. The EUR/USD is said to be 2.1 pips, while the promoted assets are forex currency pairs, indexes, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and stocks. The leverage is indicated as being between 1:500 and 1:1000.
INVESTZO.COM REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
Originally the website opened to us in Thai but it quickly translated into English. This small window reveals that the broker targets Thai users mainly, and not to mention that in the registration process the broker asks specifically if the client is a Thai resident. Scams are very rampant in Thailand, and Investzo.com seems to be one of them.
However, in the site we are told, out of the blue, that the broker is allegedly registered in Canada, and regulated locally by FINTRAC. However, this agency is Canada’s financial intelligence unit, not the official regulator. For some reasons all scammer claiming to be Canadian all state to be regulated by the wrong agency. This showcases that these people don’t really do any research but copy from one another constantly. Just for you convenience, the official regulator in Canada is the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), and no Investzo.com is not licensed by it.
But then further down the site the broker says that its main firm is operated directly from the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This offshore jurisdiction does not have an FX regulator, thus it doe snot provide legit legal services to the broker. Moreover, the laws there allow for scammers to pretty much act any way they see fit. So an SVG registration is quite useless.
Investzo.com is completely unlicensed and a risk to all. Do not invest here!
It would be a big shame to lose all that money to scammers. By registering and investing in an unlicensed broker, you are indirectly throwing your money away for a completely futile and illicit cause. There is no reason to do so. That is why we urge our readers to rely on European, UK, US, or Australian brokers, or any licensed entity for that matter. Licensed entitles are covered by hundreds of requirements, many of them apply financial compensation schemes, and anti fraud practices. In other words, they are the exact opposite of what this broker and others like it stand for.
INVESTZO.COM TRADING SOFTWARE
There was a trading platform available, but we did not open it for two reasons. Fist of all, the trading software link was very shady itself, meaning that it might have contained a malware, as its common for unlicensed brokers. The second reason was that we did not open an account so we never got account credentials.
INVESTZO.COM DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
According to the website, the minimum deposit is $20, which seems very low and it is, but it’s a way to attract more users to the scam.
The broker says that it offers e-based payment methods, bank transfer, and “other” payment methods. What the latter are is not disclosed.
There was no further information. We have no withdrawal details, not any fees discussed whatsoever. There is no telling what the firm has in store for users that invest.
That’s why all users and readers should avoid investing here. There is nothing here for you. All capital will be lost! Investzo.com is a scam and a risk to all!
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Generally, the first step to being in a scam, whether a user is aware of it or not, is to bridge the crucial gap that exists between a user and a broker. With legit entities rarely does this go beyond the limits of formality, whereas with scammers they will try to behave as close friends, and will try to sell you as much as they possibly can.
It easy to fall prey to their sweet talk, because as financial instruments grow more complex, so do scammers, and there are surprisingly advanced swindle techniques that will leave you empty handed faster than you know. So make sure to think before you act, and to ask for professional guidance if necessary.
Contact usually begins at the online ads level, and expands to the telephone line relatively fast, depending on how good the scammer is and how susceptible he or she is to manipulations.
The ultimate goal is reached once a scammer successfully causes an initial deposit to be invested. Once this happens the user has become the victim, and from then on the fraudsters will try to retain the client for as long as possible, draining him/her along the way.
On average, it takes 2 to 3 deposits for a user to realize that something very unlawful is happening. By that point however, the broker will cut all communications with the user and will deny all withdrawal requests.
WHAT TO DO IF SCAMMED
The most common action to take is to file for a chargeback, but this happens only if the user has invested with a credit or debit card. That’s why you don’t get many investment frauds taking card payment nowadays. But the good news is that, if money was invested via a card, the chargeback period for MasterCard and VISA is 540 days.
Wire transfer deposits are harder to get back, and the only thing we recommend is contacting the bank to sort things out if possible. Oh, and make sure to change you bank account user name and password ASAP!
Crypto transactions are lost for good, unfortunately. As cryptocurrencies become more numerous and the systems underlining them more complex, scammer are taking full advantage of these aspects, and the end results are very lucrative. So, never trust unregulated brokers with crypto payments.
And then, we have to mention the other type of scammer, the recovery agents. These are either third party fraudsters or extensions of existing swindles, and will provide the seemingly impossible service of tracing your lost money. All they need is a fee for their effort, a sum of money that will be lost once paid.
