Russia Sees Rise of FX Scams Amid Local Market Suppression

[mlawson71]

According to data released by the Russian financial regulator, there has been an increase in online scams, namely solicitations from unlicensed companies.

Citizens are warned to ignore online promotions, especially phishing ads found on popular websites and to be careful when someone is aggressively encouraging them to invest. Apparently certain banned forex platforms have been targeting newbie traders by claiming that there were no risks in online trading and by promising steady profits.

All this comes on the heels of a previous drop in customer complaints about unlicensed forex companies. It appears that while stringent regulation did turn away a lot of traders from the forex market, those that remained looked to offshore companies and not licensed Russian companies, leading to the abovementioned result.

Source

I firmly prefer strict regulation for brokers, but I think regulators do need to take into account what is best for traders too - when regulation is too strict, it just pushes people into the waiting hands of scammers.