Greetings to all! My name’s Alex Titovskii. I’m an entrepreneur and a quite experienced lawyer. Today, due to the current circumstances, I’ll make a review-exposure on a “large international company” (it even becomes a little funny at this point) - Investors Trust. 

I came across this scammer on a business trip in Dubai (having some rest there at the same time). How did they manage to scam a lawyer, you ask? These guys always act through intermediaries because their cheapo website can hardly impress an investor. 

So, here’s the story of how it happened to me: a consulting company having good reviews registered a company for me as well as provided assistance in opening accounts and obtaining the necessary licenses. Just honest clerks, you know. But after some time, the bank required a repeat compliance procedure (checking the origin of the money), and these consultants caused a fuss. 

They said that I urgently needed to make investments from the account so that the bank would be convinced of my good intentions; otherwise the account would be closed. That’s all. After that I was too lazy to sort everything out or read the contract. All I did was read reviews about this company on the internet.

I usually do this, - type the name of the company + “scammers”, - and if the company has already tarnished its reputation, it always comes out on the Internet. How was I supposed to know they were effacing the reviews? 

No sooner had I delved deeper into my fleeting investments than a girl from Investors Trust emailed me and said it was high time to invest another $15,000 so that my investment plan wouldn’t receive “invalid” status. In other words, so that my first $15,000 doesn’t burn out. Since that very moment, I decided to “remember my youth,” brush up my lawyer skills and dig deeper about this company. What did I find out? Let me surprise you! 

Why did I instantly decide that Investors Trust were scammers? 

1.  As it turned out, they did NOT have a license. It’s that simple. As soon as you ask for papers with a stamp and to indicate the regulator who issued the license, simple excuses come up. In addition to this, any decent organization has these documents publicly available on its website. Investors Trust has only allures for goofs on its website.

2. Unreal net income up to 7% in dollars. This figure is physically impossible unless the client is deceived. I myself have worked in this field for quite a while, so I know it for sure. Take any company or bank as an example: a maximum of 5% annually, mostly 4%; in Dubai they don’t give more than 2%. And these scammers reinvest your money in the largest companies in the world (according to their own words on the website), where 2.5% is already considered an excellent income.

As an example of you getting rich, on the website they put a picture of a family that invested 15,000 and received 16,000 just a year later! What a miraculous investment! And all the doubts about the income fade away as soon as we see a chart!

The only alarming point about the chart is that it’s flat! It’s impossible to receive absolutely even income every month in the stock market, especially for years. And the money is taken specifically for management, and not for deposit. Their schedule should look like any other decent company’s one:

 

It is not always profitable and never smooth. But Investors Trust apparently employs such professionals who even control the world market!

3. Intricately veiled tariffs and interests for services that “eat up” all the investments during the investment period. Let’s suppose (if you believed) that you can raise 7% per annum in Investors Trust, then the commission for the company’s work will put everything in its place (I’ll explain this picture in more detail later): 

4. Information disclosure and auditing aren’t freely accessible. I’ll tell you more (checked in practice): unavailable unfreely either. They simply do not exist. Just text them and ask to make sure.

5. Illegal contract provisions which charge payment for 15 years in advance in case of early investments withdrawal. I.e., one has to give money for 15 years in advance first to take one’s money per annum. Never have I come across such nonsense before! Even the most famous scammers in the world (MMM) had much more adequate conditions back in time. If only Mavrodi got to know the scammers from Investors Trust, he’d get absolutely flabbergasted.

6. Mandatory annual payments equal to 100% of the initial investment. That is, if you invested 1000 dollars, be so kind as to add another 1000 every year. Otherwise the investment burns out!

7. Incorrect information about the office. When I started looking for at least some official contacts to file a lawsuit against these frauds, I even got a little hurt by how people are scammed in the modern world. These clowns didn’t even bother to add an office in Google Maps in the Cayman Islands. At the address mentioned on their website (by the way, the site was made for a maximum of $200 by an aspiring programmer) there’s only a police department. Honestly it is a good place for them… By the way, 2 weeks ago when I got the first article, they were located in a swimsuit store. After that they changed the address to cheat people.

8. The site is filtered by fraudulent services. The most authoritative resources for identifying scammers have long been familiar with the website of the Investors Trust company, where there are dozens of reviews from people like me who didn’t immediately check the company and invested something there:

9. There are no contacts. The address is fake. No phone numbers. They always blame the representative. They communicate only by mail on the website, which can be made in 5 minutes. 

In addition to clause 3 about interests, here’s some simple arithmetics according to their agreement. 

Let’s invest, for example, $1000. After 15 years, assuming the company suddenly decides to give you your money back (and somehow doesn’t disappear), it turns out that its “services” cost a lot of money. Let’s count:

1. Annual fee of $84 = $1,260 for 15 years. 

2. Commission of 1.5% per year (which was hidden in the monthly commission) = 22.5% for 15 years = $225 

3. Another commission of 1.9% per year for the first 10 years, then 0.35% = 19+1.75 = 20.75% for 15 years = $207.5.

In total, after 15 years you must pay $1692.5. Everything is fair in accordance with the documents. Let me remind you that you invested 1000. 

But the cherry on top is the early repayment. If you suddenly decide that paying more than you invested for 15 years is somehow unprofitable, you’ll be informed that if you repay early, the company will take money for its “services” for 15 years in advance. You are not mistaken. It will take money for future services that do not and will not exist. They have their own laws, unknown to international law, which I also studied and practiced.

Starting cooperation with Investors Trust is obviously a loss for an investor

Why is it a loss? That’s simple. There is no one to complain to. The company has no regulator, no country whose laws they obey (I wouldn’t be surprised if the management of this scam company is located somewhere in Ufa). Where should I write or complain? In addition, the complaint will be indirect, since their contract, which you sign, states that you must pay them, or you won’t see the money. Nobody forbids making fraudulent contracts.

First of all, Investors Trust is a trap for those who are too lazy to read long contracts, especially in English. In fact, the contract says nothing about the company’s responsibilities, but you have to constantly pay for their “services.” Moreover, if you compare these tariffs with normal brokerage or banking organizations, it becomes clear that they are tens of times more expensive. Why? In order not to return the money. For example, in Dubai the broker charges 0.3% per year. And not almost 4% like these scammers do.

How Investors Trust scammers work and why people fall for it

There was a catch at this point. It must be said that Investors Trust approached the scam very carefully, well-planned and on a large scale. They didn’t waste their time on 100-200 dollars like regular SCAM, but aimed immediately at investments of 10,000 dollars or more. And to find such clients, you need to gain trust and create the illusion of prestige, because no one will give 10 thousand dollars to an unpresentable site for no reason.

At this point, trading companies, insurance companies and even banks get involved in the scam. Their employees don’t mind earning extra $1000-2000 by selling this service. Who can doubt that a bank in Dubai itself can sell SCAM? Although, as I found out, these scammers operate mainly in Slavic countries. Many victims were from Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and Bulgaria. For each country, the minimum deposit was different, - somewhere 3000, somewhere 500 dollars, apparently depending on the standard of living.

Of course, after a lot of litigation, bank employees will surely review their methods of earning extra, but at that time their goal was to make money. Considering the advantages of working with a bank in the Emirates, $15,000 seemed like a small amount to me, so I made the deposit without any second thoughts.

A year has passed. They demanded to pay again. And now I suggest getting acquainted with the circus, in which I, unfortunately, took part.

Of course, he refused. Only an idiot would pay someone to give him his own money back.

And the swing began to swing as the scammers realized that I was no longer going to pay their dues. After correspondence of 30-40 messages, the impudent ones from Investors Trust introduced new variables: the account will be canceled unless you pay more.

 

The desire to receive some kind of agreement wasn’t successful, and the information on the site doesn’t say that the money won’t be returned. 

 

Having reached another impasse, the arrogant representatives of Investors Trust reveal all their cards so that I no longer bother them with their legal terms, laws and discard all

thoughts of returning my $15,000:

 

According to the law invented by Investors Trust themselves, if you have invested funds, you do not have the right to withdraw them, but you have to pay (although my “tariff” was for 15 years...) payments of 15,000 dollars for 25 years and after this period of time, taking into account the commission of 50%, you can return this money. 

Of course, if a reputable company with a non-existent address in the Cayman Islands does not accidentally go bankrupt or transform into a swimming suit store. But this cannot possibly happen! The company works with the largest brands in the world. That’s what it says on their website! 

And now the icing on the cake. Having reached a dead end with the question of providing an agreement, payment for a deposit, the regulator of their organization and the body that issued them a license, they simply say: “We aren’t going to answer you. All the questions should be directed to the bank employee who sold you the agreement with us!”

 

And finita la comedia: the curtains close; the circus leaves! After that the company gets tired of answering me. They tell me that it’s high time to ask questions to the person who sold their policy to me and leave them alone, and they won’t give me anything. Of course, I also wrote to the person who told me to invest in these scammers. Of course, as you guessed correctly, they cheated me again and pretended that they didn’t understand anything. All questions should be directed to those who accepted the money, - just pay regularly according to the schedule and everything will be according to plan.

   

I’m not particularly upset that I lost 15,000. What kills me more is that in the 21st century you can almost legally take money from a person without being punished. But let this deal with me bring them at least some inconvenience, - I’ll tell the entire Internet about it. And nothing hits scammers harder than the truth and a real client!