What is a Boiler Room?

A boiler room is a bit like a call centre, except they are the ones that do the calling. They call people who have 'expressed an interest' in trading, or in other words have been taken in by their advertising campaigns that make absurd promises and get your details whilst you are still stunned and in disbelief at their claims. This is the world of Brexit Millionaire, Immediate Edge, Bitcoin Circuit and Quantum AI.

They all sound pretty impressive, as they are claiming that for a deposit of $250 (or latterly $300) that you can make thousands in your first day, and again every day after that.

Boiler room scams are a particular type of investment fraud that typically involve aggressive and high-pressure sales tactics to convince victims to invest in worthless or non-existent securities. The scam gets its name from the high-pressure sales environment that is often depicted as a "boiler room" operation.

In a boiler room scam, fraudsters typically cold-call victims using a script that includes inflated claims about the investment opportunity, promises of high returns, and time-sensitive offers that pressure victims into making quick investment decisions without proper due diligence. The fraudsters may also use high-pressure tactics such as repeated phone calls, intimidation, and even threats to convince victims to invest.

Once the victims invest their money, the fraudsters typically disappear, leaving the victims with worthless securities or no securities at all. Boiler room scams can result in significant financial losses for victims and are often difficult to prosecute due to the use of offshore companies and false identities by the fraudsters. It is important for investors to be wary of unsolicited investment offers and to thoroughly research any investment opportunity before investing.

How Does a Boiler Room Scam Work?

Boiler room scams typically follow a similar pattern in which fraudsters use high-pressure sales tactics to convince victims to invest in a fraudulent or worthless investment opportunity. Here are the basic steps involved in a boiler room scam:

1. Contact: The fraudsters typically reach out to potential victims through unsolicited phone calls, emails, or social media messages. They may use various techniques to gain the victim's trust, such as pretending to be affiliated with a reputable financial institution or using persuasive sales tactics.

2. Sales pitch: Once the fraudster has established contact with the victim, they will present an investment opportunity that appears to be legitimate and promising. They may use high-pressure sales tactics such as time-limited offers, promises of high returns, or claims of exclusivity to pressure the victim into investing quickly.

3. Paperwork: After the victim agrees to invest, the fraudster will provide them with documentation to make the investment official. This documentation may be fake or incomplete, and may not provide the necessary information about the investment opportunity.

4. Disappearance: Once the victim has invested their money, the fraudster will disappear, often with no way for the victim to contact them. The investment may turn out to be fraudulent or worthless, leaving the victim with little to no chance of recovering their funds.

Boiler room scams are typically very aggressive and high-pressure, and victims may be contacted multiple times until they agree to invest. It is important to be aware of the signs of a boiler room scam and to be cautious when approached with unsolicited investment opportunities.

Let's have a look at an email we received from a boiler room scammer just today in 2021:

 As you can see, the email is all about making a new life without working and being financially free. The promise is that with a very simple plan you can live a life of luxury without working and travel the world. This promise is consistent across all of the boiler room scams.

The boiler room scam is designed to take advantage of victims' emotions and vulnerabilities, often targeting older or inexperienced investors. The fraudsters use aggressive sales tactics and create a sense of urgency to pressure victims into investing quickly without proper due diligence. These scams can result in significant financial losses for victims and are often difficult to prosecute due to the use of false identities and offshore bank accounts. It's important for investors to be cautious when approached with unsolicited investment opportunities and to thoroughly research any investment opportunity before investing.

Who is Behind the Boiler Room Scams?

Well, at the bottom of the email, the company details are shown:

Optium LTD. Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake Island, Majuro, Marshall Islands, MH96960 Registration No. 110334

The company is registered in the Marshall Islands which are a remote island chain in the Pacific. The Marshall Islands have very special financial regulation to attract finance companies as well as being very difficult and expensive to get to. They also operate a huge number of mail forwarding services so that you can register a company there but have your offices elsewhere. This is a very common practice amongst brokerage companies. As with many of these boiler room scammers, they also happen to have a UK style phone number, but an 0203 number can be routed to anywhere on Earth.

As you will also be able to see, they are immediately associating themselves with huge US companies such as FaceBook and Zuckerberg, as well as telling you that this is your financial future. If you click any of the links you are taken here:

Boiler room scams are typically orchestrated by organized groups of fraudsters who are often located in other countries and operate under false identities. These groups are highly skilled in using high-pressure sales tactics and exploiting the victims' emotions and vulnerabilities to convince them to invest in fraudulent or worthless investment opportunities.

Boiler room scams are typically carried out by individuals who have experience in sales and marketing, and who are often well-educated and fluent in multiple languages. These individuals may operate out of call centers or "boiler rooms," hence the name "boiler room scam."

These fraudsters use various techniques to avoid detection, including setting up fake companies and using offshore bank accounts to transfer funds. They may also use false identities or disguise their true location to avoid being tracked down by law enforcement.

Boiler room scams can be difficult to investigate and prosecute due to their global nature and the use of false identities and offshore accounts. It is important for investors to be cautious when approached with unsolicited investment opportunities and to thoroughly research any investment opportunity before investing.

How Does the Boiler Room Scam Work?

Now on this site we can see that their only objective is to get your email address and phone number, that is all they need to begin their scam. They will phone you up and persuade you to make deposits into their system which you will then be able to trade with. They do not tell you what you are trading, they do not tell you who regulates them, they only tell you that they are going to make you rich. They do have the same phone number as the email though, so we could assume that they are also Optium Ltd but that may not be the case. If we look at an alternative site, beneffx.com we can see that there is a company with that name: Company information: This website is operated by Optium LTD. Registration No. 110334 with registered address at Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake Island, Majuro, Marshall Islands, MH96960

Payment agent information: Key Solutions LTD, registration number 206198441 , Address: Banishora, bl 56/A/5/15, 1233 Sofia, Bulgaria.

We would have to contact them to find out if they operate the stock dictionary site. The name could be a red herring to feign legality. There does not seem to be much else on this company except that one company with the same name was registered in Britain in August 2021:

OPTIUM INTERNATIONAL LTD | Company number: 13556570 | Registered office: 68 BRAMAH HOUSE, 9 GATLIFF ROAD, LONDON SW1W 8QD | Company type: Private Limited Company | Company status: ACTIVE | Incorporated on: 9 August 2021

But there may not be a connection.

How Do The Boiler Room Scammers Get Your Money?

As you can see in the above, the alleged product they are toting offers auto-trading of cryprocurrencies. 

Auto-CryptoTrading site scams are a common way to bring in people to the boiler room scams and are just the same scam as any of the Bitcoin xxxx scams with the same tactics, the same websites and the same scammers.

Profit Build and Profit Edge are ways of tempting you in to a boiler room scam which is one of the most dangerous financial scams around.

Through a combination of psychology and lies they force you to give them all of your money.

In the modern age this is often by gaining control of your computer and transferring you money into cryptocurrency so that they can move it between different cryptocurrencies and make it difficult to trace where it is sold. This is a simple way of laundering money into the Russian mafia or elsewhere.

Typically these companies are registered in places like St Vincent's and the Grenadines or other nations where the rules are demonstrably made specifically to harbour criminal enterprises.

The actual call centres are typically within your own country and the contact details for them to call (because the bullying and abuse required to get your money is most easily conducted by phone) are harvested across some of the most trusted sites on the web, including Google, FaceBook and Twitter.

How Do The Boiler Room Scammers Find Their Victims?

Let's look at an example.

Google's Google Ads system is a favourite of theirs, so let's see what keywords they are advertising with today:

Let's try Bitcoin:

 

OK so you can see that CFD brokers are advertising under Bitcoin, but they do announce on their ad that 72% of people lose money so we will have to put up with that being allowed. CFDs are highly complex trading contracts and not for beginners. They are also open to a lot of misuse br dodgy brokers and what you lose goes straight to them, so the temptation for them to defraud you is high, and it is difficult to prove as the brokers make the rules and the small print. It is good to see that Google are not advertising the boiler room boys under this search.

Now let's try Bitcoin Profit as our search term:

 

OK, so here they are. If you look at the bottom result, you can see it is supposedly a website called aliveinvestment.com telling us that Bitcoins work and they have 80,000 satisfied customers. Let's see what happens when we click that link:

OK so it takes us through to a page designed to harvest contact details for boiler rooms scammers to call. This one is called Bitcoin Profit and is at: https://bitcoinprofit.investment-club-eng.com/new2/

 

As you can see, every emotion is attacked by these people. Fear, insecurity and greed are all employed to get your details with a typical 'time is limited' message at the top to pressure you into making a terrible mistake.

These are the same scammers that use Good Morning, Martin Lewis, Elon Musk, Holly Willoughby and Akshay Philips to try and defraud people with their boiler room scams.

Boiler room scammers typically use various methods to find their victims. Here are some common ways that boiler room scammers find their victims:

1. Cold-calling: Boiler room scammers may make unsolicited calls to random phone numbers, hoping to find people who are willing to invest in their fraudulent or worthless investment schemes.

2. Mass-emailing: Scammers may send out thousands of spam emails to potential victims, offering them investment opportunities that are too good to be true.

3. Social media: Scammers may use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to connect with potential victims and promote their fraudulent investment opportunities.

4. Seminars: Some scammers may host seminars or conferences, promising to provide attendees with valuable investment advice or access to exclusive investment opportunities. Once attendees are in the room, the scammers will use high-pressure sales tactics to convince them to invest.

5. Referrals: Scammers may use existing victims to refer new victims to their fraudulent schemes. They may offer existing victims a commission or other incentives to refer friends and family to their investment opportunities.

Boiler room scammers are often skilled at identifying potential victims and using persuasive sales tactics to convince them to invest. It is important for investors to be cautious when approached with unsolicited investment opportunities and to thoroughly research any investment opportunity before investing.

What is the Truth Behind the Boiler Room Scams?

There is no such thing as an 'autotrader'  that makes money every time without loss or risk. They would never ever sell it even if there was. Any computer that could predict the stock market would either change the market so that it became impossible for the computer to predict it, or allow the user to gain control of the US Federal Reserve and take over the world. Such an intelligence would have to have access to the world media and know what to believe and what not to. As such, the intelligence in question would have to understand human nature, psychopathic nature, greed and the world markets. In other words, such an intelligence would not be controllable by a boiler room scammer.

How Big is the Boiler Room Scammer Network?

The network that runs these scams around the world in many different languages all have similar strategies and share website templates and other strategies such as technology and data storage.

One obvious connection that confirms affiliation between all of the scams is that every one of these sites has the same disclaimer at the bottom:

This site is an affiliate of a boiler room scammer, pretending to be a CFD broker. The nature of CFDs allows boiler room scammers to hide behind the law as CFDs are such a scam that you can just point at the legal disclaimer and say I told you so' to get out of prosecution for fraud.

Why Are There So Many Boiler Room Scammers?

These affiliate companies are paying as much as $700 USD per victim to affiliates and so the lengths the affiliates will go to and the lies they will tell are unbelievable. If they can get three victims a day that is a million dollars a year! Just for running a website.

The most advanced website scammers actually have two factor authentication to be sure they are getting a real phone number so that the boiler room boys can be sure they can victimise someone and so be sure of their $700 fee for every successful contact number harvesting.

So you can see the problem...

But the scale of the problem is quite astonishing. Let's do an exact search of google for part of the disclaimer, as that is most likely provided by the affiliate system, and will be identical for all of their affiliates. We will search for "The success of those in the testimonials and other examples are exceptional results and therefore are not intended as a guarantee that you or others will achieve the same results."

As you can see at the top, there are 1,830 results with that exact text on. This is truly unbelievable for such a concise search of such length. Every one of those 1830 websites is either a scammer affiliate for a boiler room scam, or they are warning of the existence of these website scams.

There are several reasons why boiler room scammers continue to operate and why there are so many of them:

1. High profits: Boiler room scams can be highly profitable for the fraudsters. By using high-pressure sales tactics, scammers can convince victims to invest in fraudulent or worthless investments, and then disappear with the money. The potential for high profits is a strong incentive for scammers to continue operating.

2. Low risk: Boiler room scammers often operate from offshore locations and use false identities to avoid detection. This makes it difficult for law enforcement to track them down and prosecute them. The low risk of getting caught and facing consequences for their actions makes it easier for scammers to continue operating.

3. Lack of investor knowledge: Many victims of boiler room scams are inexperienced investors who may not fully understand the risks involved with investing. This lack of knowledge makes them more susceptible to high-pressure sales tactics and fraudulent investment opportunities.

4. Global nature of the internet: The internet has made it easier for scammers to reach potential victims around the world. Boiler room scammers can easily set up fake websites, send spam emails, and make unsolicited phone calls from anywhere in the world, making it more difficult for law enforcement to track them down.

5. Lack of regulation: Some countries may have weak or inadequate regulations to protect investors from fraudulent investment schemes. This creates an environment where scammers can operate with relative ease.

Overall, boiler room scams continue to exist because they are profitable for the fraudsters and difficult for law enforcement to prosecute. It is important for investors to be cautious when approached with unsolicited investment opportunities and to thoroughly research any investment opportunity before investing.

What Can Be Done To Stop Boiler Room Scammers?

What is the solution? CFDs need to be outlawed for retail accounts worldwide to protect us. They do not need to be made illegal to professional traders, just to retail accounts. Once this is made law in enough countries, the scammers will have to remove all of these websites as they will be illegal in every country which reads the language in which they are written.

Is this an attempt to bring about internet legislation? Maybe..

It certainly seems ridiculous that so many people are involved in international fraud using skills that could easily make them good money in many legal applications.

Stopping boiler room scammers can be difficult due to their global nature and the use of false identities and offshore accounts. However, there are several steps that can be taken to help prevent boiler room scams and bring scammers to justice:

1. Education: Educating the public about boiler room scams and how to recognize them can help potential victims avoid falling prey to scammers. This can be done through public awareness campaigns, educational materials, and outreach programs.

2. Regulation: Strong regulations and enforcement can help prevent boiler room scams by making it more difficult for scammers to operate. This can include laws and regulations that require investment companies to be licensed and registered, as well as laws that impose penalties for fraudulent activities.

3. Enforcement: Law enforcement agencies can investigate and prosecute boiler room scammers, working to shut down their operations and bring them to justice. This can involve cooperation between international law enforcement agencies to track down and arrest scammers operating in other countries.

4. Technology: Advancements in technology, such as improved fraud detection software, can help identify and prevent fraudulent investment schemes. This can help law enforcement agencies and financial institutions to identify and prevent scams before they can cause harm.

5. Due diligence: Investors can protect themselves from boiler room scams by conducting due diligence on any investment opportunity before investing. This can involve researching the company, reviewing financial statements, and consulting with trusted financial advisors.

Overall, preventing boiler room scams requires a multi-faceted approach that involves education, regulation, enforcement, technology, and due diligence. By working together, law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, and investors can help prevent boiler room scams and bring scammers to justice.