This site obviously hoped to imitate and sell their scam using etoro’s reputation. Scammers are desperate, so they implement any ideas that would help them deceive many people and steal their money. In any case, the life of a fraudster could be a race against time in the quest to deceive as many people as possible before their scheme becomes obvious.

Etoroinvest is a site that has taken advantage of the brand name of one of the most reputable exchanges in the industry –eToro, in quest to deceive investors and steal their funds. Luckily, it takes more than just setting up a site to convince many people to make deposits.

Good News

Investors are in luck concerning the quality of web copy put up by Etoroinvest which is obviously a scam investment site. What makes it a scam is not just that it is deceiving people with a sound-alike name.

This site is actually a high yield investment program and if you’ve had experience with investing, you would know that all HYIPs are scams. They are set up by fraudsters to create buzz and traffic and steal as much as they could from uninformed investors.

When you see a poorly set up scam like Etoroinvest, it is good news because few would fall for it. We are aware though that irrespective of the obvious flaws such as grammatical errors, some investors still fall for sites like this.

There are few basic signs to look out for in scams. These are:

Intention To Deceive

The purpose of any scam site is to lure potential investors to make deposits on the site and this is accomplished through deceit. No one would want to have anything to do with a site that they know is out to steal their funds. So scammers have to package their sites with the intention to deceive the visitors.

For instance, you can see that the Youtube video on Etoroinvest does not feature a real person whose identity could be traced, but it was packaged as a documentary to sell the scam.

Impersonation

Scammers never reveal their id for obvious reasons. This is contrary to the standard practice of genuine companies. The owners and executives of the real eToro exchange are known. But looking around the Etoroinvest site, you wouldn’t see any profiles or information about its owners.

The people behind scam investment sites are always working to evade arrest from law enforcement agents such as Europol and Interpol, so keeping their id hidden is norm.

Impersonation is standard practice for scammers and this is accomplished by presenting stolen identities of others and posting such on the site to represent the scammer.

Unrealistic ROI

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission website:

“If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Compare promised yields with current returns on well-known stock indexes. Any investment opportunity that claims you’ll get substantially more could be highly risky. And that means you might lose money.”

Compare the return on investment seen on the Etoroinvest site with what is obtainable in the capital market or coin market. What you’ll find is that the entity behind the site is merely trying to lure uninformed investors with unrealistic returns.

This is not surprising because they have no intention of making any payments at all since no one knows them. Funds sent to the owners of this site would be lost. It’s just like flushing your money down the drain.

The basic investment plan on the site is 120 percent in 24 hours. This ought to be a red sign for a discerning investor, but many do not research before sending funds to scammers.

Copying Content Without Attribution

Many fraudsters are just too lazy to work, so they quickly copy content from other websites and paste on theirs. A careful investor should conduct due diligence such as plagiarism check. This would give you a clue if the site you’re dealing with is manned by professionals or fraudsters.

Granted, some fraudsters would write their own content or easily pay a freelancer to do it. Many prefer the easy way out and this is to your advantage as an investor. Think about it…why do must people go into criminal activities such as online fraud? They’re just too lazy for honest work.

As an investor, you should look out for those signs of laziness and unwillingness to put in the best in a site or whitepaper. A lazy fellow would always give themselves away because of their tendency to put in little with the intention of getting much.

Many of us have seen employees who do the minimum they can get away with instead of the maximum for which they were employed. 99 percent of scam sites are manned by such people.

You can see a screenshot of simple Google search of a section of Etoroinvest website where they wrote:

“…organizations has a since quite a while ago settled worldwide vicinity giving a full scope of danger administration items to members from all parts of the base metals market and cryptocurrency exchanging.”

I removed the portion where they mentioned the name of the site to get Google scan sites with similar content. Plagiarism software would give you even more in-depth analysis if Google couldn’t return the expected result.

Using Faked, False or Expired Documents

Registering a company is easy. In fact, thousands of companies are registered daily by fraudsters. So the fact that a site presented documentation to that effect does not make its operations legitimate.

Nevertheless, fraudsters are not all in the same league. Some scammers would cut corners out of laziness or because they do not have the funds to present an impressive scam.

You can notice that Etoroinvest footer indicated a link to “UK Company Registration”. Clicking this link would take you to the Company House page that shows that the company’s status is “dissolved”.

This should be a clear signal that you’re dealing with a site that is not supposed to be in business according to law.

Use of Fake or Virtual Address

While on the Company House verification page, you will notice that the listing address of the company is different from what was posted on its website.

The listed address was 10 Furnival Street, London, United Kingdom, EC4A 1YH while the address on the website is 13 Charlotte Pl, Fitzrovia W1T 1SN Great Britain.

We can even use Google Earth to get a view of the address the company claims as theirs and determine if it is a business district. A deeper research would show if the address is a virtual office.

Most scam sites use virtual offices that cost less than $100 a year and meant to be used by new businesses. This is why you should always research on investment propositions irrespective of how good they sound.

We can check the people behind the site at the Company House website. The name,  MITCHELL Noah came up as the company director. However, all searches for this individual yielded nothing. This shows that he is another faked identity.

Using Fake Testimonials

Well…fake testimonials have been used by many fraudsters to deceive many investors. People usually believe what others say and are encouraged to buy because others say the product (or service) is good.

Real companies sometimes pay people for positive reviews. Fraudsters do this even more but in a bizarre manner. Most times, in their quest to cut corners and deceive, fraudsters use fake images culled from other sites like stock photos to fake non-existed identities for reviews on their sites.

Etoroinvest did not post reviews, but the pictures of the ladies at the top of the site were taken from other sources in their photo-shopped states.

Posting Fake Data On-site

You can see two tables, “Last Deposits” and “Last Withdrawals” showing the amounts supposedly deposited and withdrawn by the investors respectively. That is standard technique used by HYIP and many other scam sites.  

Blockchain based transactions made with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash are traceable. The fraudsters wouldn’t post transaction id for the payments for obvious reason – they’re fake.

 

Lying About Duration Online

From the information on Etoroinvest site, it claimed that it has been online for 1290 days. That’s 3 years and 6 months. But when we checked the site’s domain, we saw that it was registered on July 4, 2019.

Fraudsters want to create the impression that their sites have been online for a long time. Online reputation sometimes is a function of how long a site has been around doing business.

People tend to trust older investment sites since they believe that they’re reliable. The understand that the company behind it has been paying its investors for a long time.

 

This online credibility is what Etoroinvest wants to take advantage of. The company they’re trying to ride on its goodwill, Etoro has been around since 2006. The CEO, Yoni Assia is known and it is one of the most reputable exchanges for trading assets.

Personally, I’ve used eToro. It’s a platform for everyone. One of their best products is the copy trade that enables new traders to copy professionals and get the same results as the experts. You can sign up with the REAL eToro here.