Beware! Aglo 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.
Aglo Trade is a fairly typical example of a website that claims to be an established, regulated forex broker but is actually something quite different – an anonymous online scam targeting inexperienced people. In this review, we will take a detailed look at how you can identify such scams and why you should under no circumstances trust Aglo Trade with your money.
AGLO TRADE REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
Legitimate forex brokers provide clear and detailed information about the legal entity that owns and operates them, where it is based, what licences it has and which regulators oversee its activities. Lack of such details or improper presentation of them are always a red flag that we are probably dealing with a scam.
As pointed out, Aglo Trade is completely anonymous. Neither the website nor the Client Agreement and other documentation name an owning company. That alone is enough to write Aglo Trade off as a scam.
On the homepage of the website we see a statement that the unknown owner company has licences in Cyprus as well as in two offshore areas – Belize and Mauritius. At the same time, an incomplete contact address in Austria is provided.
However, the text of the Client Agreement specifies a different applicable jurisdiction – the offshore zone of Vanuatu.
A check of the database of the relevant regulators in these jurisdictions shows that there is no authorised forex broker using the Aglo Trade trading name and domain.
Whoever is the actual owner of this website is not a licensed forex broker.
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 UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in US or Australian Securities and Exchanges Commission (ASIC). 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.
AGLO TRADE TRADING SOFTWARE
The Aglo Trade website doesn’t even mention the most important tool for forex trading, the software. After registering an account, we see that Aglo Trade uses a pretty basic web-based trading platform.
This platform has the basic functionalities for displaying technical indicators and placing orders, but cannot be compared with the capabilities of the software used by legitimate brokers.
If you use the services of a licensed broker, you will get the opportunity to use established software with advanced features and versions for all types of devices and operating systems. The most widely used trading 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.
It should be noted that the presence of some kind of trading software is no guarantee that this is a genuine broker. Financial scammers often use trading platforms to fool their victims that their money is actually being invested.
AGLO TRADE TRADING CONDITIONS
Aglo Trade claims to offer three types of trading accounts, but does not provide a detailed description of the associated terms. Only two parameters are specified – a minimum deposit of 150 USD and leverage between 1:100 and 1:500.
Legitimate forex brokers offer a variety of trading account types tailored to the needs of clients with different capital and investment intentions. These brokers also provide clear and detailed information on trading parameters – leverage, spread, commissions, order execution method, etc.
The high leverage offered by Aglo Trade is further evidence that this could not be a legitimate broker operating in a regulated jurisdiction such as Cyprus or Austria.
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.
In addition, licensed brokers often offer Micro and Cent accounts to novice traders with very low minimum deposits, sometimes as low as 5-10 USD.
AGLO TRADE DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
The Aglo Trade’s legal documentation mentions credit card transactions, but we do not see conventional payment methods in the deposit menu itself. The choice is only between different cryptocurrencies.
This is typical of financial scammers. Cryptocurrencies are their payment method of choice because on the one hand they allow the scammer a degree of anonymity, and on the other hand they do not allow the scammed to ask for 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 GiroPay. If you’re interested in legitimate brokers that accept digital currency payments alongside conventional methods, check out this list.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORKS
Fake brokers are a type of scam that has spread especially rapidly in recent years, aided by the excitement surrounding cryptocurrencies. People looking for ways to make money online can very easily come across one of the many scam websites of this type. Scammers are very skilled at convincing people to invest – first small amounts of a few hundred dollars, and then larger sums of money. Some of the scam schemes are quite elaborate and even use trading software to convince victims that their money is actually being invested and even racking up profits.
But when you ask to withdraw those winnings, or even your deposit, you’ll find it’s impossible – you’ll be told that a sudden change in the market has wiped out all your money, or that you have to meet impossible minimum trading volume requirements and pay huge fees and commissions hidden in the terms and conditions. Fraudsters can also simply disappear because they use fake names and offshore shell companies for their operations.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
If you find yourself scammed, the first thing you should do is notify the financial authorities in your country about the scammers’ activities, and spread the word online to warn other potential victims.
Your options for getting your money back are limited. If credit or debit cards were used for the transactions to the scammers, you have the option to request a chargeback. Companies like Visa and MasterCard now allow such requests to be made up to 540 days after the transaction. But keep in mind that if you have provided proof of your identity to the fraudsters, they may dispute that the transaction was voluntary. In addition, fraudsters typically use cryptocurrencies and shady e-wallets that do not allow refunds.
Victims of scams are often targeted by another type of online fraudsters who promise that their money can be refunded for an upfront fee. Under no circumstances should you trust such offers.
