Is Equity Gates A Scam? Equity Gates Review

Legit Trading Platform, Or Financial Fraud?

Is Equity Gates A Scam? Cybertrace has recently become aware of the scam network of websites run under the ‘Equity Gates’ (eqgates.com) website brand. In this blog post we examine the claims made by Equity Gates, look into the regulatory status, and also check out community reviews by real users. 

We will also look into how the scam works, whether investors get paid, the fake trading dashboard and the faked industry awards that are displayed on the website. 

What Is Equity Gates And What Services Does It Claim To Offer?

Ok let’s dive in! The Equity Gates website has a large animated graphic at the top showing trading charts and figures, and has a large bold main headline that says “Accessing the Financial Markets Made Easy”. The sub headline  under this says “Access the most popular financial markets with our top-notch services. Enter a secure, user-friendly trading environment where you can trade global markets quickly and confidently”.

They sure try to make it sound safe and easy with these headlines, but is it really? Trading global markets quickly and confidently is a bold claim in itself, as any kind of trading involves a certain level of risk. Generally speaking trading isn’t usually quick either.

Further down the page, Equity Gates lists the following trading account types on offer:

• PAMM Account
• MAM Account
• Copy Trading
• VIP Trading

Additionally, the Equity Gates website lists the following payment methods available. 

• VISA
• Mastercard
• Bank Transfer
• Bitcoin
• Tether

It is unclear to Cybertrace whether Equity Gates allows payments via VISA or Mastercard. However, it is common practice for trading websites to use cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Tether. In this case, they will list a wallet address where victims can transfer their crypto. Bank transfer as a payment option sure is a possibility, but unconfirmed.  

Regulation And Licensing: Where Is Equity Gates Registered?

eqgates.com website

The footer of the website states, “The website is owned and operated by EquityGates”. Additionally, in the copyright section lists, “EquityGates Investment Solution”. However, searches through international company record databases did not return any results for either EquityGates Investment Solution or EquityGates. This indicates that these companies are not legitimate registered companies. 

Searches of the financial regulators FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) did not reveal any licensing details for EquityGates Investment Solution or Equity Gates either. 

The legal documents page mentions “DDBIS” instead of the Subject brand, Equity Gates. 

“At DDBIS We respect confidentiality and will work towards safeguarding your personal information.”

This likely appears to be a leftover from when the Subjects duplicated one of their previously operated websites, a huge red flag. This is common practice with fraudulent trading websites, Cybertrace sees this all too often on the websites we investigate. 

Open source searches of “DDBIS” uncovered this Trustpilot review page for DDB Investment Solutions, however the website is no longer active and no archived versions could be located.

https://au.trustpilot.com/review/ddbis.biz

Our Cybertrace ScamID™ tool lists a warning for the eqgates.com website, and lists it as high risk.  

Open source searches of the eqgates.com website identified a ScamAdviser review page with a 1/100 Trustscore, which strongly indicates that the website is fraudulent.

https://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/eqgates.com

How The Equity Gates Scam Works

As with most trading scams, the Equity Gates scam operators convince people that the platform is legit, after usually contacting them out of the blue via social media or messaging apps. Sometimes they will allow victims to withdraw small amounts of money at the very beginning of the scam to build their trust. Once trust has been built they will then convince people to deposit larger and larger amounts of money. 

Then usually a ‘dedicated account manager’ will be assigned to carry out the job of extracting as much money as possible from the victim. The account managers can be very pushy and persuasive, and many people at this point still feel like they are trading with a legitimate entity. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The next step we see all too often in these kinds of scams is that the communication with the operators will dry up, or they will become obviously evasive. By this point many people will be starting to see the red flags. Many victims at this point will finally realise they have been scammed. By the time it is way too late.

Equity Gates Withdrawal Process: Are Investors Getting Paid?

When victims try to withdraw their funds they quickly find out that the user dashboard that looks like it should allow this, is in fact just a front. No funds were ever going to be withdrawn, the fraud operators already have your money and there’s not much that can be done to actually ‘withdraw’ your money via the website.  

Cybertrace has already helped victims of the Equity Gates scam, and from all reports no one has been able to withdraw anything. So the simple answer is, no – investors are not getting paid. 

The Fake Trading Dashboard That We See All Too Often

The fake trading dashboard is a hallmark of the all too common online trading scams we see here at Cybertrace. People get convinced very early on in the scam that the dashboard is legit, then over a period of weeks or months they will finally realise the wool has been pulled over their eyes. 

The trading dashboards used by these trading websites sure look convincing to the untrained eye. It appears that your funds that you ‘deposited’ are making large (and unrealistic) gains… just like the unrealistic claims on the website’s front end. 

However, they aren’t. The stats and figures in the trading dashboard have been totally fabricated. It is sad to see how many scammers are preying on innocent victims after luring them into these elaborate trading scams. 

Client Testimonials: What Do Real Users Say?

Like with the majority of scam trading websites, many user reviews online see victims complaining about being scammed by the Equity Gates brand. Makes sense right? However, another common tactic we see is that the scammers create their own 5 star reviews to trick people into thinking the positive reviews outweigh the negative. 

Often it is easy to spot, just look at the dates that the 5 stars reviews have been posted on. The scammers are often quite lazy with this, they will pay someone to make the fraudulent reviews – but often all on the same day…or a few days apart. This is a dead giveaway that the glowing 5 star reviews are fake. 

These reviews have been specifically created to manipulate people into believing the scam website isn’t a scam. When a website appears to have a 4.7/5 rating, you’d be surprised at how many people would not investigate any further and just believe this figure.  

Faked Industry Awards And Trusted Partners

The eqgates.com website lists a number of industry awards on the home page as follows:

• Best Forex Research And Education Provider 2022 (UF AWARDS)
• Best IB/Affiliate Program APAC 2023 (UF AWARDS)
• Fastest Growing Multi-Asset Broker 2023. (Gazet International Magazine)

They are under a heading that says “Awarded by Industry Experts”. A few simple Google searches identified that these are in fact the winners of the above mentioned awards on those years:

• Best Forex Research And Education Provider 2022 – BDSwiss.
• Best IB/Affiliate Program APAC 2023 (UF AWARDS) – BDSwiss.
• Fastest Growing Multi-Asset Broker 2023. (Gazet International Magazine) BDSwiss and EXANTE.

It sure didn’t take much time or research to prove that Equity Gates did not receive any of these industry awards. This raises a major red flag about the legitimacy of the Equity Gates brand. 

The Final Verdict: Is Equity Gates Safe?

It could not be any clearer that the Equity Gates brand raises many red flags about its legitimacy. Unregulated operation, hidden ownership details, user complaints about access to funds, and low trust scores all point towards Equity Gates being a brand you should steer well clear of. 
Have you or someone you know been scammed by the Equity Gates brand? Reach out to Cybertrace today, we are a leading cyber investigations company based in Sydney, Australia.+

Feel free to tell us your story in the comments section below if you have been scammed by eqgates.com, or one of it’s associated websites.