ICO Group – aka Investing Capital Online Group – appears to be a fake crypto investing platform that’s scamming unsuspecting investors out of their cash.
PawProfitForum Team was contacted by someone who described the scam as follows:
“Initially, I was contacted by one of their representatives proposing an attractive investment opportunity on their trading platform. They presented it as a good offer, asking me to only invest a small amount to start. After investing this initial sum, they then requested more funds, to which I invested an additional amount.
“Two months later, when I attempted to withdraw funds from my supposed earnings, the withdrawal was never processed. At that point, my account was showing profits of £20,000. Instead of allowing the withdrawal, the representatives then began constantly demanding I send more money for various bogus fees – insurance, accreditation to financial authorities, activation of transfer cards and more.
“Despite their polite phone manner and professional appearance, it became clear this was a scam operation. Different representatives would contact me with new reasons I needed to pay more, slowly extracting more from me through their fraudulent claims. They claimed my account balance had grown hugely in less than a week, requiring even more payments for taxes and insurance.
“Once I stopped engaging and making further payments, they began threatening me with charges of 40% per day for delaying required payments. At no point was I able to withdraw any funds from my initial, or subsequent, investments.”
The person has described very well a common type of scam that continues to catch out would-be crypto investors.
How to check a crypto platform is legitimate
It can be very difficult to spot a crypto scam, but there are various things you should look out for, including:
- Do the profits on offer seem unrealistically high?
- Can you reliably check the platform is being run by a genuine company?
- How do you hear about the investment? Were you contacted by someone online?
- Does the platform have social media channels? Check to see how far back the posting history goes.
- If at any stage you’re being threatened, you should go to the police immediately. Legitimate companies would never employ this kind of tactic.
- Does the platform’s website contain all the information you’d expect from a legitimate company, such as team info and business registration?
- Is the content of the website accurate and grammatically correct?
Have you had any experience with this platform? Kindly share your thoughts in the comment section to help others stay informed and safe.