Introduction – Our law firm receives a lot of inquiries from people expecting a large trading program payout in the near future. By large we mean tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions. We have never ever yet seen one of these people ever receive any money. I cannot tell you how many of these people we have spoken to over the years but it is a lot. We generally get more than one a day. Never have we ever had a client who had already received the funds contact us to arrange an offshore asset protection structure and offshore banking.

Trading Program Scams – The way these scams and frauds work is there is some sort of a trading program allegedly taking place. It can be stocks, options, forex, bonds, gold, silver, platinum, oil, sugar, diamonds, medium term notes and other things. The returns are supposed to be fantastic. The payout will come, soon very soon but it may get delayed several times. The giveaways are as follows. The people we talk to never ever successfully completed such a transaction. This is always going to be their first. They may know someone who says they completed a trade and got paid. The term for this is a shill. We also hear them says things like humanitarian projects and giving back to the people, things that are rarely ever mentioned to an asset protection law firm. We do not disapprove of such things, actually we applaud such actions but it is so out of place for us to hear this talk we take notice and it triggers fraud alert.

The person usually is vague as to where the money is, when it will be coming, where it will be coming from. The exact amount and so forth. This is absolutely not the kind of conversation one has with a person who has tens of millions of dollars. Some of these people are thinking they are so close to becoming a millionaire or billionaire they are intoxicated by the thought and will not listen to anyone saying it is a scam. They talk about buying jets, estates, factories, yachts, and everything else. Bottom line we have never ever seen anyone receive these payouts from these trading programs. If this sounds like you forget the money. You have no experience in the field and why would anyone pay you such a vast sum for a trade. It’s not like you have been trading notes, oil, sugar, cement etc for 15 years and know how to position deals.

If it is too good to be true – it is not true. Never give these people any money at all. Stop wasting your time with it. Please do not waste our time either. Selling you a corporation or foundation would be a waste of your money. The promoters tell you to get set up so it seems more real to you and you buy a corporation then they hit you for some fees to get funds released, taxes or some fictitious nonsense. Forget it now.

Downline Payout Scam – The scams take many different flavors and forms. It can be a MLM pyramid marketing scam. You sell some worthless nonsense to others just to get them in your downline. They make money not by selling products to end-users but by bringing others into their downline, which is also your downline. People have to pay some money to sign up and get into the game. They will pay several steps removed to you for bringing people into the downline and in turn them bringing people into the downline. If you run the math my gosh you will be making a fortune. The scammers keep it going by saying they will not do a payout until so much money is collected.

The give away on such a scam is that there is no emphasis on selling real products to end-users. Real MLM’s do sell good products to end-users. People do make good money at this. By good money we mean a few hundred thousand a year which one works up to over a few years, not eight million dollars in a few months. No payout until a certain level is hit, which is high is another scam clue. Third scam clue is they say you will make vast sums of money for not much effort (think chain letter). If you are a victim of such a scam we do not want to sell you a structure to protect assets you will never receive and make your losses any greater than what they already are.

Forex Scams – Some promoter runs a forex program. You are given phony trading reports to make you think the fund is doing great. You then bring friends in. You get a commission for them plus a piece of their trading profits. How hard is it to dummy up trades after the markets are closed. The payout day never comes. Then the trader makes some bad trades and all is lost, or he just gets lost. We never ever see anyone get paid with these get paid to being others in deals. There are legitimate forex deals sort of managed funds accounts. Some may pay forty or eighty percent a year, not the crazy yields these scams tout.

How We Spot Scams – The people inquiring about sheltering their soon to be had fortunes lack the sophistication of an international business person with substantial assets. When we ask them where the money will be coming from they do not have a clue but some say an offshore bank. When we ask them when the money will be coming again no exact idea. If we ask them is the money going to be wire, check, bank check etc. they do not know. They do not know what currency the funds will be in. All this is very atypical for a sophisticated businessperson. They also generally lack any contracts that specify any specific amounts on a specific date.

Sometimes scammers set up a non existent offshore bank web site with online banking software and these people get passwords to log in and see the money, sometimes in an account in their name. We ask them what they did to get the account open in their name and they say nothing it just happened. We tell them to call the country the bank is supposed to be in, talk to the authorities and get the number of the bank that way if it exists and try to verify the account. Of course no one ever got this verified and the banks are non-existent as a rule.

Conclusion – Invest money in reputable projects with reputable firms. If you are clueless as to what to do buy bank CD’s. Consider real estate but learn the specific market first. Lawful fortunes are generally made with sweat and hard work and they come slow with good investing a requirement. These get rich plans appeal to people’s greed. If it is too good to be true, guess what it probably isn’t true.

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