How to know if an online investment is real? Is it a Fake Investment?
Are you considering investing in something new? Maybe you’re looking to put your money to work, save for your child’s education costs or grow your retirement nest egg. But how can you know if it’s a fake investment? In today’s online landscape, investment scams are well-designed elaborate schemes. According to Scamwatch’s data, Australians lost over $250 Million dollars to investment scams in 2022 alone. The scammers themselves have all the knowledge in the world when it comes to fake trading, investment opportunities, and cryptocurrencies. If you’re asking yourself “how to know if an investment is legit”, you’ve likely either already fallen victim to a scam, or you’re cautious enough to try and find out for sure, before investing your money. We hope it is the latter. Can professional website due diligence help protect you?
If you’re looking at a trading platform or investment website, you might find a company name or a lack of spelling mistakes. This alone does not mean it is legitimate. Carrying out proper due diligence is so important and could save you from losing your hard-earned money! Today’s scammers create such professional, sleek websites that it can be very difficult for someone to know if an online investment is a scam. This is the reason why professional website due diligence is so important.
We are often contacted and asked, “How to know if an online investment is real?” Even our team of highly trained digital forensic investigators needs to closely examine all claims on investment websites and then know how to cross-reference the records to validate whether a website is offering a real or fake investment. Of course, our investigators have a unique skill set and also investigate technical hosting records, website source code, domain records and conduct document analysis.
To know if an investment is legit can be complex to confirm, especially if you don’t have a sound knowledge of stocks, ICOs, and crypto. Luckily, our team are world leaders in website forensic investigations and have the skills to give a clear assessment. So if you ask yourself, how to know if an online investment is real, you’ve come to the right place. Read further to identify if the investment is legit or a fake investment.
Impersonation Tactics, Fake Credentials & Fake Investment
Often scammers will impersonate registered companies. So you might find a company name listed on a trading website and confirm the company is indeed registered. This is not enough to conclude that the website should be trusted, however. Whilst the company may exist, can you confirm that the company is truly responsible for the operation of the website?
Investment websites will often have financial license certificates and other documents published on their site. However, our investigations team has seen many instances where the offenders have manipulated or created fake versions of certificates. And similarly to the company impersonation tactic explained above, sometimes the certificates are real, but not for the website they are published on.
There are many, many red flags that you can look for when examining an investment or crypto trading website. You can read our article on how to tell if a website is real or a scam here. Red flags that we commonly see include faceless operations, outrageous claims, claims of being partnered with major companies, lack of third-party reviews, and the age of the website itself.
Website Due Diligence
Recovering money from scammers is possible, however, it is complex and without guarantee. So not losing your money in the first place is clearly the best option. For many years, Cybertrace has been at the forefront of combating global investment fraud and cryptocurrency scams. Our team of fraud investigators have analysed and warned against thousands of websites. Whilst our team specialise in Cybertracing the scammers to find the culprits responsible, we’re also passionate about scam prevention. ScamID is a free tool we developed that is based on our own algorithm. Simply search a website and our tool can let you know if there is a known risk associated with the website. However, new scam websites are being launched every day, so you still need to be careful if ScamID does not warn you of a known risk.
How To Know If An Online Investment Is A Scam
If you’re considering investing with an online opportunity or an overseas crypto investment website, ensure you are 100% certain it is not a scam before you send any money! If you’ve conducted your own checks to find out if the investment is legit or not, and you’re still not absolutely certain, then consider engaging Cybertrace to conduct a due diligence investigation on the website and company. Investing some money now in a check of the website could save you losing hundreds of thousands of dollars down the track. Sadly, most people only consider an investigation once they’ve already suffered major financial losses from a scam. If more people considered an investigation BEFORE investing money, we’re confident it would save a lot of financial devastation.
Hopefully, you’ve just started considering an investment opportunity, you’ve searched online about how to know if an online investment is legit, you found and read this article and now you’re interested in having professionals assess the investment for you. If that’s the case, contact our team today to learn more about our website due diligence investigations and identifying fake investments.
Tags: how to know if an online investment is a scam, how to know if an online investment is real, website due diligence, How to know if an online investment is legit, fake investment
