2024-04-10 04:28:56
Between advice on investing in the stock market, Rachel Pinto talks to Marie (not her real name) and gives her several tips. There was “absolute trust” between this aspiring broker and the 50-year-old woman from Hauts-de-Seine, France, who had already invested more than 90 thousand euros in the scheme. Until the day Marie lost everything.
The story goes back to March 2023. While scrolling boredly on Facebook, Marie came across an ad that caught her attention. A celebrity, “Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk or Léa Salamé, I don’t remember”, was promoting a trading platform that would allow him to “make a lot of money”.
More recently, other celebrities such as Jamel Debbouze, Francis Cabrel and Elise Lucet were used in false advertisements about the same scheme broadcast on social media. In Portugal, the image of former Prime Minister António Costa, or Júlio Magalhães, as well as other personalities, has also been used to explain how this platform is an easy money business.
Returning to Marie, in France, it was easy to convince her of the good business opportunity and, in two clicks, she filled out a brief form. The next day, “Rachel Pinto”, a woman using a false name, called him from a number with a Luxembourg dialing code.
She introduced herself as an investment consultant for Nixse, a trading platform created in 2020 and based in Taiwan. Marie was convinced and made an initial deposit of 800 euros.
“Fabulous deals”
After “small transactions” in gold and oil deals that yielded only a few tens of euros, Marie became impatient. After a week, Rachel proposed “a fabulous deal” with quick earnings of between 4,000 and 5,000 euros, but Marie had to deposit “20,000 euros”.
Given the Frenchwoman’s reluctance, the consultant even advanced her the profit money. A few hours later, “wow, 4,600 euros fell into my trading account,” she recalls. But Marie didn’t have access to that account.
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He won 500 thousand euros
Even so, excited, Marie, who had previously been a stockbroker, decided to start trading on her own. On the fake Nixse platform, its – fictitious – curves rose: “So, take the trust and get rid of the savings account that yields nothing, we get rid of everything.”
With his transactions he accumulated 500 thousand euros in his various accounts. One day, in September, he wanted to recover his capital, more than 90 thousand euros. But “I never saw the money again.”
Several months have passed since then and Marie still thinks “every day” about the “beautiful relationship” she had with “Rachel”. “She had come into my life and we felt like our privacy had been violated.”
Banks and insurance must act and reimburse
Since then, he has tried to recover some of his losses by appealing to the bank’s Ombudsman. “The bank has an obligation to be vigilant in the case of large transfers and must ask customers to sign a liability waiver. Otherwise, their insurance company must reimburse the funds,” explains Marie’s lawyer, Jocelyn Ziegler.
His office, specialized in these issues, has received “600 cases” since 2023, with average losses of around 120 thousand euros. “There is a wide variety of profiles, from low-paid workers to businessmen.” The biggest loss, from a company administrator, reached 6 million euros.
At the top of the scheme are “organized criminal groups who do everything they can to remain anonymous and give themselves an appearance of legitimacy”, explains Anne-Sophie Coulbois, director of the Central Body for the Suppression of Serious Financial Crimes (OCRGDF).
The roles are divided between several “very well constituted” teams: “phishing” to collect victims’ data, call center managers, “sometimes a simple rented Airbnb with three people and ten phones” and “launderers” of stolen money with the help of “bank mules”, ready “sometimes to give their name to open an account abroad for just 50 euros”, explains the commissioner.
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Platform blacklist
Given the proliferation of these fake platforms, whose addresses web suffer infinite mutations, the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), responsible in particular for protecting investors, reinforced its policy.
“When we detect a site fraudulent, we send a contradictory request. If there is no response within the legal deadline, the AMF registers the site on your blacklist”, explains Claire Castanet, Director of Investor Relations.
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“The blacklist is a way of alerting the public and can be completed by a judge blocking access to the site at the request of the AMF”, he adds.
To date, the Nixse platform has not been censored and the site remains accessible.
2024-04-10 04:28:56