These are the mechanisms most used by scammers in the investment world. By knowing these fraud schemes we can avoid them. Although these scams have been used for many years, with globalization and the emergence of new markets (for example cryptocurrencies), they are constantly being adapted and perfected, but the core is always the same.

Recommendations: This scam consists of gaining the investor's trust based on consistently correct recommendations. Suppose the scammer gets a list of e-mails or phones of 10,000 investors, what he does is divide it into two groups of 5,000 each, and one group informs him that Amazon shares are going to rise in the next week while the other informs him that the shares will go down.

In this way, it is already assured to have an accurate prognosis for 5 thousand people, for which it repeats this procedure three or four more times, for which after 4 weeks it will have a group of 625 people to whom it is 100% correct. of the forecasts submitted, and they will trust that the scammer is a Wall Street genius.

At this point, two things can happen about this group:

A- Request a payment to continue receiving these magical forecasts, for example for an annual subscription.

B- Request funds to invest under these miraculous algorithms. What happens naturally once the money is received is that they disappear, or pass mediocre recommendations.

Pyramid Scheme or Ponzi Scheme:
This is one of the most dangerous schemes, not only because the victim ends up losing his capital, but he also affects his family or friends that he introduced in the scheme to obtain an extra commission or percentage of profit.

Generally the product or good offered is an excuse since it is used merely to comply with the law and to hide suspicions of deception.

The scammer generates a network, promising investors that their capital will be safe and they will get an attractive return, making it easy for them to start adding people who "invest."

Mainly this system has two rules as characteristics:

A) That you have to leave the capital immobilized for 3, 6, or up to 12 months.

B) They offer a higher yield, or payment of a commission in the case of bringing more investors.

In this way, by having the investors' capital blocked, the pyramid continues to grow and with the entry of the capital of the new investors into the system, the investors who withdraw are paid, which gives the pyramid credibility, since Investors see that there were never any problems with payments and let their capital continue to grow in the system.

But even if they have always paid properly, it is inevitable that at some point the scheme stops growing and there begin to be difficulties to pay, which causes everyone to want to withdraw their capital at the same time and it is discovered that there is no capital to return these investments.

Sometimes these schemes are so well put together that they take on gigantic proportions. The main problem is that they hide under the link of a product or service, for example investments in cryptocurrencies, stocks, credits or commodities, but it always ends up breaking and the scam comes to light.

Trading robots: There are several sites on the internet where they offer the sale of software that operates automatically and provides constant profits.

First, it makes little sense for someone to sell sophisticated software for less than $ 2,000 if it is capable of trading and generating a profit.

Although there are genuine trading software in the market that works correctly, they do not have the artificial intelligence to constantly generate profits, but rather have parameters that must be defined by the user or very basic (similar to those that large investment platforms offer) . Therefore, you must always keep in mind that not all that glitters is gold.

Foolproof investment methods: Similar to the previous point of trading robots, there are people who sell their courses or magical methods with which they ensure that you will become a millionaire.

It is ridiculous to think that by buying a course or method we are going to obtain exponential returns without any risk. However, I could not stop naming it since there are still many people who promise these things, showing how marketing people in a deck chair in the Caribbean following the investments from their tablet, or in luxury cars, that although there are people who do, they definitely did not get there with the courses and methods that are for sale on the internet.

Fake wealth management companies:
In the case of fake companies, they usually say that they are based in a tax haven for tax purposes, which makes it difficult to obtain corporate information and references about these companies.

They also show awards for their investment management (obviously false or paid), false reviews or paid notes in some newspapers.

They have websites where users can enter to see the evolution of capital, in some cases they even offer an initial capital as a gift to start operating with them.

Once the victim makes a deposit into their account, scammers can block the user, block withdrawals, or worse, allow minimal withdrawals to build trust and keep the victim depositing more funds into their account, which will see how it increases. fictitiously, until you realize you cannot get hold of the funds.

Another possible option that borders on illegality is a management company that works with low-reputation brokers, who are accomplices, liquefying investments with high implicit or detailed commissions in the fine print.