Hi, scam victim here

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 Aug 2010 Posts: 2

Hi guys
I'm not sure whether this is the right place to post this, but I've been recently scammed (cost me 27k USD) and a lot of other people have been hit by the same scam as well, so I'm just posting here to maybe get some ideas on what can be done.

Some years ago I wanted to learn how to trade forex - the foreign exchange market. I went on a website whose name is Forex Factory, and that's the largest community on the internet for forex trading. I spent several months on that website and then noticed one member (called jacko) who was praised by a lot of other members as a really great trader, and back then he was offering to mentor people for the cost of 500 dollars a year. Some time later I decided to join the group of the people he was mentoring, and wired him 500 dollars. It seemed like a good investment and he was a good mentor, and I recouped my initial 500 dollars and made some more money by following his trades and advice. He answered my questions whenever I had them, by e-mail or SMS.

After about one year, he informed all group members that he was establishing a "managed fund". A managed fund is a pool of money traded by the fund manager. For example, if the fund manager makes a 2 percent profit on a trade, all the people in the fund make a 2 percent profit on their investment. I didn't join the fund at first, but it all looked really legitimate - he would notify us about his trades in advance and there was never any suspicion that he was faking his results. So about half a year later I did join the fund (I wired 27K to the company, which was based in Hong Kong), and for the next year and a half the fund "grew" at about 30-40 percent a year. One time I took about 7 thousand dollars of my own money out of the fund and wired it back to my account, just to see that it was ok. Since there were no problems and I got the money I asked for, I wired it back to the fund. You have to understand that to all of us he was more like a friend - we would e-mail him and SMS him, and he would always answer us kindly and politely.

Well, a couple of weeks ago all the investors got a message saying the company was shutting down and that each investor would be getting back their money in late July - early August. By early August all communications with "jacko" and with his company ceased, the company cell phones could not be reached anymore, and the website went down. That's pretty much it. He hasn't been answering our e-mails ever since. Some people invested a lot more than I did (some even as much as 80-100K).

Here's the thread on Forex Factory where you can learn more, if you want:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=27286&page=748

If you have any suggestions on what to do, I'll really appreciate it.

Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:15 pm

Does anyone else think this might have been a Ponzi scheme?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 1:27 pm

Sounds to me like the classic Ponzi scheme scam which was actually pioneered 90 years ago. It basically relies on setting up an initial group of investors who get high returns which are generally funded from other investors in the initial group. If any of the initial investors want to get paid out the scammer does so, which means that they spread the good word and usually re-invest the money anyway. Of course the good word quickly spreads and the investors expand exponentially and because the potential returns are so good most investors just plough back their supposed gains.

This is how Bernard Madoff conducted his fraud on a grand scale which collapsed due partly to the GFC.

To your case the news doesn't sound good. He is probably operating under a pseudonym and will prove to be untraceable.

419Eater is my life Joined: 31 May 2010 Posts: 255

I don't think there's much to be done about this as far as scambaiting goes.

Scamwarners is the site where you probably want to report this.

419Eater is my life Joined: 25 Aug 2006 Posts: 403

definitely a PONZI...

sounds like a Pyramid in the offering for anyone that wants it...

Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 3:34 pm

He is still blogging here :
http://waynejacksonfx.blogspot.com/

Quote:

... I also use the 50% Fib ratio..

only 50% lies, are you sure?

Not that Eater deals with Ponzi scems as such :

Quote:

If you want to know more, please contact me here: [email protected]

His last post was 2nd August, he is not accepting any new traders.

Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 3:46 pm

goldenfleece wrote:

Well, a couple of weeks ago all the investors got a message saying the company was shutting down and that each investor would be getting back their money in late July - early August. By early August all communications with "jacko" and with his company ceased, the company cell phones could not be reached anymore, and the website went down. That's pretty much it. He hasn't been answering our e-mails ever since. Some people invested a lot more than I did (some even as much as 80-100K).

This looks like they have decided to cut risks and shut down the scheme. This kind of thing is bound to burst at some time anyway.
Then maybe set up a new one and do it over again.
This looks more like something for the police. And yes, I know they might be unable to do a thing here, but I think it's the best thing to do.

Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 6:56 pm

I followed that thread to the end.
Fascinating.
What an education in scamming.
And hand-washing.

Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 3:25 am

^^^ "Fascinating" is an understatement.

That whole thread goes runs through the classic denial-anger-acceptance pattern. It's also an insight of what may go through the minds of victims of 419 scammers.

Besides the old "if it sounds too good to be true . . . " caution, there is another consideration: if I knew of a can't-miss investment scheme I may tell my family and close friends, but I certainly would not troll the internet to tell total strangers about it.

Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:03 am

^^^Agreed, an understatement.
It cut rather close to the bone, bring back memories of a 'sure thing' one of my colleagues was on to in the stock market.

They shared the tip with us and I can recall the adrenalin surges as we followed the 'sure thing's rise on our breaks.
Fortunately, I sold out the day before the 'sure thing' crested.

Reading that thread brought it all back vividly. What differs is that our experience was among colleagues investing ourselves in the stock market, not a Ponzi scheme.

I´m very sorry for your experience, goldenfleece and thanks for posting it here, so others can learn from it.

Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:58 am

lakeside77 wrote:

if I knew of a can't-miss investment scheme I may tell my family and close friends, but I certainly would not troll the internet to tell total strangers about it.

Exactly so. If someone discovers a method of making money in the markets, the surest way to ruin it's effectiveness is to let a whole bunch of people in on it. If it really worked, the "guru" would make many orders of magnitude more money applying his system in the markets than he would selling the method to strangers.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2010 Posts: 46

I feel very sorry for you for your lost but really don't know what could be done. Thanks for the educational thread as well.

That is the biggest thread I have ever seen.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 Aug 2010 Posts: 2

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I'm glad that you found the thread informative. So far we've gone to the Hong Kong police, to the bank where we wired the money, and to our embassies in Hong Kong. I can't really hope that we'll see our money back, but hey, they did catch Madoff, right?

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 1440

Quote:

the old "if it sounds too good to be true . . . "

Right. I was a stock trader for 25 years. The most important thing I learned was to NEVER give anyone control of your money...ever...not even if that person is a relative, and certainly not to a stranger on the net using a pseudonym.

I'm sorry you lost all that money. It's a hard way to learn a lesson. Sad

Master Baiter Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 154

So sorry to hear of your experience goldenfleece.

Ponzi schemes are pretty unique in that the fraudster must gain considerable trust from many people before they start to see results.

I guess in this instance, it paid off for the fraudster.

I hope you hear some good news from the Police soon! Maybe once they've caught him they'll let you go down the Police station with a garden fork and a bucket of frogs?