Beware! WAI 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.
The WAI website greets us with the claim that it represents “the world’s most reputable broker”. Apart from the fact that we have never heard of this broker, inspection of this website provides us with no evidence to support these bold claims. In fact, it is quite the opposite – the fact check provides us with proof that we are dealing with a scam. Let’s take a detailed look at why you should never trust WAI with your money.
WAI REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
WAI claims to hold financial service licenses in many countries around the world. But this website lacks basic requisites of a licensed broker. No company name or contact address is listed on the home page. The only method of communication is email.
In the “About Regulations” section, we see a statement that this alleged broker is supervised by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the United States. We also see a low quality image of a purported license in the name of Wealthy Accumulation International Limited.
But FinCEN is not an institution that is in the business of licensing and supervising forex brokers. To operate as a forex broker in the United States, a company must be registered as a futures commission merchant and foreign exchange dealer with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and to be a member of the National Futures Association (NFA). And there is no Wealthy Accumulation International Limited among NFA’s members.
We have no evidence that such a legal entity even exists. WAI does not provide access to Terms and Conditions, Client Agreement, Privacy Policy and other documentation required by a licensed broker. We can be quite sure that this anonymous website is not the regulated and award-winning forex broker it claims to be.
Before investing your money in financial instruments, it is imperative to make sure you do so through a licensed intermediary and not one of the many scammers lurking online.
You should only trust legitimate brokers operating in one of the established financial centres like the UK, EU, USA or Australia. There, the activities of brokers are controlled by powerful regulatory bodies such as 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.
WAI TRADING SOFTWARE
WAI claims to offer traders the industry-standard MetaTrader 4 (MT4) platform. But the installation file that can be downloaded from the website is for a different version of the software, MT5. In addition, the platform is not configured for WAI – it is a generic demo version of the software that can be downloaded from the developer MetaQuotes website.
At the time of writing this review, we have not been able to create an account and check if this would give us access to any functioning trading software. The reason is that the WAI website lacks a form for registering a new account or logging into an existing one. That in itself is enough to indicate that there is something wrong with WAI.
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 leaders because they offer a wide range of features, including a wide variety of options for customization, multiple account usage, designing and implementing custom scripts for automated trading and backtesting trade strategies.
Claims that IRESS accounts are being offered can also be seen on the WAI website. IRESS is another advanced platform offered by some leading brands such as FP Markets. We are sure that the information about these accounts is simply copied from the legitimate broker’s website.
WAI TRADING CONDITIONS
WAI is undeniably a fraudulent website that is not licensed to offer financial services and does not have the necessary software to do so. Therefore, it would not matter whether WAI claims to offer advantageous trading conditions.
But the trading parameters described on the website provide us with some additional evidence that WAI could not really be a regulated broker.
The clearest such evidence is the claim that 1:500 leverage is being offered.
This is not a level that you see with regulated brokers. Trading with high leverage allows higher profits, but also increases the risk of sudden and excessive losses proportionally. All leading regulators limit leverage for retail traders. In the EU, UK and Australia the maximum permitted level is 1:30 and in the US it is 1:50. This maximum level only applies to trading major currency pairs, with even more limited leverage for more volatile assets.
Regulated brokers offer higher leverage only to professional clients who must meet very high standards for capital and experience and forgo the guarantees enjoyed by retail traders.
If you don’t qualify as a professional trader but are willing to take the risk of high-leverage trading, the most viable option is to use the services of an offshore affiliate of an established brand.
On the website we see different versions of what the required minimum deposit is – 100 USD and 1000 USD. In any case, it would be wiser to open an account with a credible, licensed broker. Many of the leading brands in the industry allow novice traders to start with a very low minimum deposit, sometimes as low as 5 or 10 USD.
WAI DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
According to the homepage of the website, BBB allows deposits and withdrawals via multiple payment methods – Credit/Debit cards, Bpay, UnionPay, POLi, Skrill, Neteller, FasaPay, PayPal and others. But we had no way of confirming whether this was true.
Experience with scams of this type has shown that fraudsters direct their potential victims to payment methods that do not allow refunds or chargebacks, most commonly cryptocurrencies.
If you’re interested in legitimate brokers that accept digital currency payments alongside conventional methods, check out this list.
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 WORKS
Scammers who promise easy money without any effort are nothing new, especially on the internet. But given the excitement around bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in recent years, malicious actors have run rampant more than ever, capitalizing not only on people’s desire to solve their financial woes with a magic wand, but also ignorance and misunderstanding of how blockchain and complex financial instruments actually work.
If your curiosity is stirred by one of the many flashy websites promising easy riches, and you provide your contacts, you will soon be contacted by skillful and persuasive scammers who will convince you to start with a relatively small and “risk-free” investment. If you agree to this, you will be transferred to even more skilled at convincing scammers, who will persuade you to invest even more. Any money you give to such people is money you are unlikely to get back.
Any attempt to withdraw deposits or alleged profits will be hampered by numerous and significant fees, as well as harsh and often prohibitive conditions written into the terms and conditions – such as high trading volume requirements, unexpected “taxes”, or withdrawal fees as high as 10% or even 20% of your funds.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
Recovering money you have given to fraudsters is difficult and often impossible. Fraudsters always want you to provide them with documents such as a copy of your ID and proof of address so that they can claim that it is a legitimate transaction, agreed voluntarily between both parties. If the transaction is made by credit or debit card, you can request a cashback and hope for the best, but transactions via wire transfer or cryptocurrencies are not refundable. It is important not to trust online offers from people who offer to recover your money in exchange for an upfront payment, because this is also a well-known scam.
