There are plenty of fraudulent investment schemes out there. If a scheme sounds too good to be true, well, indeed, it's probably not true. Artists against 419 (419 is also known as Nigerian fraud) has a database of fake Banks (http://db.aa419.org/). Alas, this list is not complete, new schemes pop up all the time.
Let's have a look at a recent scheme: www.colonyinvest.com.
Can this be real? They apparently advertise their business mainly on Asian webboards (e.g. Malaysia), and seem to rely on word to word propaganda to sign up people, apparently in a pyramid scheme.
So, let's examine the Web site. The "About Us" section:
They claim to be the online investment branch of a major Investment company "Colony Invest Management Inc. ".
Web searches do not reveal any company by that name. Further, they are supposed to be based in Rochester, NY, but a check in the list of supervised institutions at the "State of NY Banking Department" http://www.banking.state.ny.us/supinst.htm" does not reveal any such company.
Most revealing is that nowhere in the Web site is any real adress or phone number listed. Highly suspicious.
Look at the supposed list of directors, many of the places they supposedly worked at cannot be found on the internet:
Estine Development Group, London Tucks Development Agency, Smith Simpson College, Barbra Capital Partners, Clinton, Dubbier & Rice, Inc. There is a "Simpson College" without "Smith", but why should a "reputable" company make such a mistake... Anyway, this whole list is just made up to look impressive.
What about the links to the companies they invest in, the references? You will notice that these are just links to other Web Sites, and none of these other Web Site ever mention or link back to ColonyInvest.
So, where is the Web site registered? A search on http://www.whois.net/ brings us to the registrar godaddy.com (where you can register a web site for 10$ a year). The information there yields:
Wow, a single person in Fremont California (whatever happened to Rochester, NY?) is listed as administrator and technical expert, and he has a yahoo email address in China! How fishy is that?
A reverse lookup of the phone number at http://www.whitepages.com/ gives us the following information for the same phone number:
Ibi synergy (http://www.ibisynergy.com/) is an importer of condoms for NR Synergy in Malaysia. This seems to be a little legitimate business. You can make another lookup for this Web address and find another owner listed for this phone number. But clearly, this is very different from what ColonyInvest is supposed to be.
Finally, let's look at some of the fine print of ColonyInvest. In their FAQ:
To deposit money into an account of theirs, they charge 5%!. To withdraw money, they charge 10%. So, according to the example given, you deposit 1075$, and when you want to withdraw it later, you get 860$ back. So, together with fees, they take 20% of your money, what a rip-off. No reputable bank will do that. And nowhere do they promise you any garanteed profits... For each transaction in the market they charge you 50$. A search for "online banking" will give you many online banks that allow you stock market trading for less than 10$ per transaction.
So, in conclusion, just stay away...
