Fraudsters often use “risk-free and high-return” as bait. According to WikiFX’s “forex scammer list”, among the platforms exposed in 2023, 76% promised a monthly return rate of more than 25% (the average for compliant platforms was 5%-8%). For example, “GainForex” claimed “double the return in 90 days”. In fact, by manipulating the spread (with an average slippage of 32 points) and hiding the handling fee (a commission of $60 per lot), the net value of the user’s account shrank by 92% within six months. Such platforms usually require a minimum deposit of 5,000 US dollars (100 US dollars for compliant platforms), but the withdrawal success rate is only 4.7%, and they set a trading volume threshold (800 standard lots must be completed), making it difficult for investors to meet the conditions.
Forging regulatory information is the core fraudulent means. In the global foreign exchange fraud cases in 2022, 58% of the platforms misused regulatory licenses. For instance, “GlobalMarkets” forged the Australian ASIC license number (with a similarity of 99.3% to the real number), but the IP address of its server deviated from the registered address by more than 1,500 kilometers. The coverage rate of fund isolation accounts is only 12% (the compliance standard is 100%). Surveys show that the loading speed of license plate inquiry pages on such platforms is extremely slow (with an average response time of 7 seconds and 0.3 seconds for compliant platforms), and the avoidance rate of customer service on regulatory issues is as high as 89%. In 2021, “EuroFX” was included in the “forex scammer list” for stealing the CySEC license in Cyprus, involving 12,000 users and incurring financial losses of 450 million US dollars.
Technical manipulation and data tampering are hidden traps. Fraud platforms modify the MT4/MT5 server logs (with a median error rate of 14%) to delay order execution by more than 500 milliseconds (less than 50 milliseconds for compliant platforms), and create slippage at key market nodes (with a standard deviation of 18 points). For instance, in 2023, “TradeX” was exposed for tampering with K-line data (artificially reducing volatility by 55%), causing the winning rate of users’ strategies to drop sharply from the theoretical value of 70% to 22%. The platform also set up a “stop-loss effect” vulnerability (with a trigger probability of 37%), and after being included in the “forex scammer list“, the API call volume plummeted by 90% within 48 hours.
Fund transfer and payment fraud intensify risks. Fraudulent platforms usually transfer funds through offshore payment providers. The average deposit fee is 6.8% (1.2% for compliant platforms), and the arrival period is as long as 5 days (compliant platforms arrive immediately). In 2022, “FastTrade” asked users to transfer money to accounts in the Marshall Islands and misappropriated 65% of the funds to pay multi-level commissions (with a 12% rebate rate for each level), ultimately resulting in $80 million being unrecoverable. Research shows that the median customer complaint resolution cycle for such platforms is 63 days (3 days for compliant platforms), and the encryption strength of the payment channel is only 128 bits (the industry standard is 256 bits), increasing the risk of data leakage by 4.2 times.
Social media manipulation and false public opinion cover up the truth. Fraudsters placed advertisements on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (with a year-on-year growth of 240% in 2023), used robot accounts to flood the screens with positive reviews (with a standard deviation of Posting frequency of 50 per hour), and deleted negative comments (with a deletion rate of 92%). For instance, “ProfitHub” fabricated “success stories” on Reddit (claiming that users earned an average of $30,000 per month), but in reality, it withdrew 45% of the principal through related-party transactions. WikiFX’s “forex scammer list” identified through AI sentiment analysis that the frequency of keywords such as “threatening to freeze accounts” in its customer service conversations was 18 times higher than that of compliant platforms. Eventually, it revealed that 72% of the funds deposited on this platform flowed to unregulated entities. Through continuous monitoring and cross-validation of data, this list has raised the accuracy rate of fraud identification to 96%, helping global investors avoid losses of over 3 billion US dollars annually.