In difficult times of economic crises, playing on the currency and stock exchange seems to be a particularly profitable business. They say that even on the fall of rates, you can “rise” well, and the prospect of easily getting a lot of money captivates minds. Beginners grab the first opportunity to provide prosperity and make their lives a little happier.
But not everything is as simple as advertising promises. Licensed online trading platforms provide users with direct access to exchanges. However, many scammers deceive customers, connect them to forex trading simulators and lure money from them with the help of fake rate jumps.
The Belarusian broker STForex (a review of the broker on the eto-ravod.ru) appeared on the market relatively recently, but has already managed to receive a lot of negative feedback from traders. Let’s try to figure out how reliable this office is and whether it is worth trusting money.
STForex: meet “by the picture”
Portals of financial companies are made for professional traders. It is not easy for a beginner to distinguish a licensed site with a good rating from a fraudulent fake. But even on the first page of the website of this broker, it is https://stforex.com possible to determine that we have a “dirty player” of the market (a black list of brokers).
At first glance, STForex resembles a platform with an impressive “slider” block, exchange rates, and video reviews:
But this is only the first one. First, let’s see what is in the browser line before the site address. Any serious market participant in this place indicates the name of the company in Latin. For example, BrokerCreditService Ltd from the BCS group (website: forex-bcs.com). This means that the company spares no expense on the security of the site and the data of its customers. And STForex has a simple lock here, like a three-kopeck online store.
Then we will calculate the analytics and reference documents on the site. 13 news from June 2017 and a couple of hundred videos from the Youtube channel. No reviews, no technical analysis. By the standards of financial market leaders, the site is empty. And even compared to a promoted online store, it is very poorly filled. What follows from this? The creators of STForex focus on beginners because a professional will figure them out instantly. And customers are brought to the site by aggressive advertising, because its information value is zero.
Terms of cooperation and payment information
The terms of cooperation are represented here by two tariff plans, but it is difficult to call them fair. The commission for transactions is comparable to the minimum amount of replenishment of the deposit. It turns out that a trader who only wants to try the STForex platform automatically loses at least $10. If the investor does not want to immediately say goodbye to the hard-earned money, scammers will “squeeze out” them with the help of a spread:
In addition to the commission for each successful transaction, scammers rip off a percentage of themselves when replenishing a deposit from a bank card in the amount of 1.5% of the amount of money deposited. It is noteworthy that a certain Webflow Solutions LLP, headquartered in the UK, is responsible for transactions with plastic cards.
When checking the payment operator for legitimacy, it turned out that this is a “gasket company” owned by the STForex scammers themselves. It was created in December 2018:
Along the way, it turned out that the Belarusian office of STForex often moves from one address to another. On the official website, the address is indicated: Minsk, st. Nemiga, 3, office 511, and in the official documents submitted for registration of the payment system: st. Zybitskaya, house 2, pom. 5. Are they covering their tracks?
Addresses and ultimate beneficiaries
Confusion with STForex addresses is not only in the documents of the FSA (Financial Services Authority, the regulator of financial markets) of the UK, but also in the data for the Central Bank of Belarus. In the official database of the regulator there are two records on the issuance of a license to STF Financial LLC. The first one was issued for the project Alfafinancial.by 12.09.2017 under No. 11, and this date and permit number coincides with the one indicated on the STForex website:
The second documents for granting permission to conduct brokerage activities were issued under the same number 11, but already on 07/23/2018:
As you can see, different STForex location addresses are listed. The moment is indicative and perfectly demonstrates the confusion in the documentation. Is it possible to expect such carelessness from reliable brokers with a worldwide reputation? Unlikely.
The ultimate beneficiary of the pseudo-broker STForex and its subsidiary Webflow Solutions LLP, which accepts payments from traders, was also discovered. This is a certain Maxim Yazychenko, born in 1978, living at the address: Minsk, st. Sergei Yesenin, 38, apartment 136:
The story of a deceived trader
A young Minsk resident came to the STForex subsidiary for the vacancy of an account manager. The company was called FinConsultSTS LLC, director – Ekaterina Lukashevich. During the probationary period, the girl was actively persuaded to invest in STForex. The general manager Andrey, who worked in tandem with the girl, praised the broker, told how he trades carefully and what a high income he receives. After many trainings and seminars, the girl decided to try herself in trading and invested part of her savings in STForex.
At first, trading went well, the deposit account increased. An interesting thing began when the girl wanted to resign from the position of manager and remain only an investor. After the calculation, there were calls from new STForex managers who said that the company had received a license and invited them to a master class. After some time, the girl discovered that the accounts on the platform were blocked, and her money was gone (is it possible to return the money from the broker?).
The general manager Andrew, who “incited” her to this scam, resigned. Later, the director of FinConsultSTS LLC called and offered her a free training course on self-trading. To at least lure money. The Minsk resident refused the offers and began to demand a refund, but the site stopped opening altogether. Access was only possible through a VPN server:
The girl sent a letter of claim:
The answer came 3 months later. The letter stated that the account with the specified number did not exist:
STForex is a scam and another scam aimed at luring money from novice traders (instructions for chargeback on eto-ravod.ru).
