Boiler Room Scams

:confused: --- have done same got a load [7,500 ]of i.po. shares through oxbridge cannot find any thing on ats get returned path on e-mail to ats, cant find them as a listed company in u.s.a had then for about twelve months now any information would be a great help ,a bit in the dark at the moment.----- cheers a .c.
rexpg said:
Hello Ken,
What do you make of the situation what have ATS said and what have oxbridge told you .Ihave had somebody look into this and ATSare where they say they are but their website is supposed to be a cheap version.Idont know how big they are .Have oxbridge given you a time scale and how many shares have you purchased.
cheers Rexpg
Click to expand...
 
Hey Charlton,

Oxbridge rings a bell, an old bell at that, if you post the full name of the stock, the website of oxbridge, and of the stock and I will take a look for it. Problem is, if it is IPO stock you bought, and it never went public, there is a good chance it dissappered altogether, however, due to the greed of these b%&$"$rds, what normally happens is they sell the database of shareholders to another boilerroom, and call everyone with a buyout offer to scam even more money out of you! Sometimes they just do it themselves under a different name. Post as much info as you can, there hasnt been much I cant find over the years, I have bought and lost alot over the years, but every once in a while I get a result. I hasten to add that I don´t buy stock on the phone anymore though!.


a charlton said:
:confused: --- have done same got a load [7,500 ]of i.po. shares through oxbridge cannot find any thing on ats get returned path on e-mail to ats, cant find them as a listed company in u.s.a had then for about twelve months now any information would be a great help ,a bit in the dark at the moment.----- cheers a .c.
Click to expand...
 
:eek: hi there thanks for your respnce on my foolhardy transaction the stocks are ats [anti terror & security specialists ] it seem to be a very professional web site could it be be a fraud listing on the web, they are in florida at 13899 biscayne boulevard suite 141 north miami, fl 33181 have got all the paperwork of oxbridge [share certs etc ] relating to shares proper invioce etc if its a scam its very clever one , am i under a brick are they so clever these days, had a look at the ipo listing going right back to jan 2006 can't find anything, can a company sell shares ipo [if there is one ] and not float the company on the market [ withdraw ] seem to be a large company into security with a lot of go of govermment world wide, cant get any contact with the company by e-mail ,phone, any info would help, thanks again, like you said dont buy on phone, have done a couple of times and been ok , it only needs one to lose a lot of money, did buy at $5 and bought 7.500 that about £19,000 dare not tell the wife, might be in a bedsit eating cold beans shortly, if it is a scam needs reporting to the regulators here & u.s.a hope to hear from you all the best --- alan
 
Hi, i am another so called victim of oxbridge International. I ivested £2,000 in IPO ATS Specialist, been on there website, emailed them, searched everywhere on WEB, emailed oxbridge directly but no response. Will i ever see my mony again. I did by Kinross from them £500, Though did get my money back plus profit when i complained that they were a scam. But have they set me up no as they showed their initial worthyness by giving me a return initally. So my exeperience is a little mixed and confused looking at the the postings on this site. Keep updating everyonne and share your experiences. regards Steve
 
ats

:eek: hi there, yes oxbridge offered me some pegasus wireless share at $12 & i bought 300 they were dangling the carrot, they made me about £300, all on paper not in my hand, got all the paperwork in post looked ok 'but like you say next deal [ats ] could or is a scam, just hope that these ats shares are s type might float later if i can get contact with them, they looks like a big hitter in the security field ,its a lot of work for a false web page if it is one,lets hope we can get to the bottom of this, if you look on the nevis govenment page they stopped oxbridge trading there in the back end of 2006, so were are they now, wish they would ring me would get some info, go there with some bags of sand & cement, thank for reply keep seaching- yours -alan
 
Hi Spdury and Charlton

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Doing/Regulated/Law/pdf/oxbridge_22nov05.pdf

This you may already know from a uk point of view, I found this by simply typing "oxbridge scam" into google.

http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=9915226&sort=whole
From here, you can find the Motley fool coverage of oxbridge and it shenannigins.

http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=10348

This is from scam.com, a site i had not seen before myself, so another resource found!

(Caja Granada, Marbello Centro, Spain, SWIFT CECAESMM031, IBAN ES92 2031 0227 4830 1552 1908). Were their banking details, now, these happen to be in the same street and bank that was once used by graves stanley and peabody, another scam outfit purportedly from the british virgen islands, but actually in Spain and the Netherlands.

Quite whether that account is still active is doubtful though, the pattern is usual to see 2 or 3 changes of banking when dealing with these types, and all sorts of dubious reasons as to why.

http://beach-works.com/carambola/index.php?action=listingview&listingID=4

Is paradise estate.

The other thing to note from the boards, it would appear the pitch is "you must by more otherwise you wont benifit from the buyout, the SEC says you have to have a minimum of 10,000 shares"
Fact of the matter is, the SEC would say no such thing, depending on the type of shares you have, you either benifit or you dont from a buyout, the volume is irrelevent.
The other classic boiler room technique is showing you a paper profit with what looks like a real flip into an nyse stock, then flipping you back into am IPO to send more money.

http://securities.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/pegasus-wireless-securities-erisa.html
http://law.taragana.net/archive/sha...-lawsuit-filed-against-pegasus-wireless-corp/
http://www.primenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=109546

The 3 links above are about lawsuits and where you can register a claim,

BE WARNED WHEN DOING THIS ONLINE! SOME OF THE SITES ARE SCAMS ALSO, USE YOUR OWN LAWYER!!!!

Good luck guys.
 
:| hi a charlton new on site came on this browsing tonight hydrogain sold out to a company in costa rica they have got a web it's called f.p.i [future power industries in same field ] i got a new share issue and they gave me two for one the shares are in spanish i think had to been under there laws had a few e-mails of then ,dont know if they are floating there investor relations is under construction i ask for tranlation for shares & statement from there govenment still waiting they do reply to you so you should be ok, i dont think it's a scam .
jeffatcam said:
I was sold shares in Hydrogain by cold calling. Shares were sold directly rather than through a broker. The phone call came from Spain and not the US. The money was send by bankers draft to a Florida bank. I did receive a share certificate in March - which is probably totally worthless and I have lost over $6000.

Does Hydrogain exist, if so why has nobody replied to at least 10 eamils to various names in the company on their website and other correspondance I have. I have had no response to telephone calls - just an answering machine.

I can only conclude that this company was set up as a boiler room scam so other people beware.
Click to expand...
 
Hi all...

I think I may have been scammed (massively) by APEX Management LTD. Has anyone heard of them before? If I have been scammed, they've done a truly impressive job of it. Large web site, lots of names, faces, telephone numbers, receipts, glossy brochures, regular phone calls and market updates. But having read the posts here, my blood has run cold, because they contacted me, not the other way around.
 
Hi Mike

Not heard of them, what shares did they get you into? what was the name of the company calling you APEX Management LTD or are these the shares. You have to stay optimistic as i am, fingerscross you will see your money again one day.

Steve
 
They were dealing options for me on Nymex - with some success too. I still don't know for sure that I've been defrauded, I could be doing them a huge disservice. It it is a fraud then it is seriously professional, but there are an increasing number of red flags going up and in spite of the fact that I can't find anything anywhere from anyone saying that they have also been conned - I am increasingly sure that I have been.

What are the chances of me being the first person to notice that he's being defrauded? (they've been running a managed account for me for 5 months and haven't really put a foot wrong in that time).

My main evidence that they are potentially not as they purport to be is that they claim they are regulated by the OCFDA (ocfda.org). But this in itself appears to be a scam (at least potentially!) see www.cbfa.be/eng/Press/html/2007-01-10_ocfda.asp I'm still clinging to the hope that they are genuine - but with each passing minute, my doubt levels rise. Does anyone have a really good acid test that can be applied to determine if you are dealing with a crook or not? Or.. come to that any idea how to go about dealing with the situation if in the final analysis - you definitely HAVE been conned?
 
Hi Everyone!

Hydrogain, on the face of it, does appear to be a scam. APEX, difficult to tell at the moment.

To give you a more detailed idea of how to check if you have been scammed, there are a few simple steps you can start with.

Put the company name into google followed by the word scam or fraud, if you get a lot of high ranking hits stay away for sure (in some cases like my previous post, you actually find the lawsuits)

The more infromation you post on sites like this, the more chance you have of someone being able to help you, simple things like the stocks website (if it has one) and the brokers website, with these, there are a few simple checks that can be done to see how long that site has been up, where it is based and so on and so on. The more info you put on, the more attention it will attract in the search engines, and save more people more money.

All to often over the years, i have had salesmen tell me that "oh no, we are not regulated there, but we are regulated here" only to find they arent regulated anywhere! there are now fake regulatory sites going up as the one in last post was described by the Belgian authorities, these scam merchants are always one step ahead of the law, simply because its not possible to cross country regulate. Untill and if ever that happens, these con men will rip you off, for everything you own, with one bull sh1t story after another about byouts and mergers and takeovers and reverse mergers and other crap you´ve heard of and dont quite know about.

Share what you have in information, just because a stock has a ticker symbol and a website, doesnt make it real! all to often these people will use old companies to create new ones, if they are clever, and prepared to spend the money, they will use simaler business trading shells to make it look more convincing, even own a lot of the stock themselves and buy and sell it through a number of their own accounts to make it rise and create volume artificially!

Please, all of you that have just posted with suspicion about what you have been sold, post as much detail as you have, there are a number of people like me, who have been scammed good and hard over the years that can put your mind at rest, or point you in the right direction to get your money back before its too late.
 
Thanks for your input Looker1 - very valuable. Since my original post, I've had to request my money back - partly in truth because I got "spooked" by the lack of credibility of the OCFDA as a regulatory body and partly because of a change in personal circumstances. When I made that request, it was greeted quickly and politely with an email reply saying that this was not a problem and that the paper work would be sent to me to get the transfer under way.

The paperwork arrived as a PDF attachment from Apex's accounts department and I duly filled it in and faxed it back confirming the details with an email. This was last night (26/04/07). The paperwork looks very official contains all of the legal wording you might expect it to, and was clearly not created just for me, or in a few minutes by an amateur. In short, it all looks very professional (as has every other item of paperwork they've ever sent me).

This morning at 08:09, I had a further email from the accounts department telling me that the request had been received and was being processed. The email contains the following phrase:

"First the funds will need to be certified for release by the U.S. Tax authority once that process is complete, funds will be returned to the co-ordinates specified. Please do not expect your funds to be returned before Monday 7th May. If funds are not received after this date please contact me but not before. "

In all honesty, I would not expect an international transfer of this type (US to UK) to take much less time than that - given that the money has to travel via an intermediary bank - but I guess this could also be a delay to give them time to clear off with the money without me getting too suspicious. Who knows.

Essentially, until the money is either back in my account or until emails and phone calls start going unanswered, I'm not going to know.

I did a fair amount of research in to this before I started - but in my final decision to invest, I relied very heavily on the fact that they were regulated by the OCFDA. Even now, if you do a search for APEX + SCAM on Google, you will get nothing relating to the company I'm dealing with. Remember, I've been dealing with them for 5 months+ so unless I'm the only person that they are dealing with, I'd have thought someone would have posted something somewhere on the Internet by now...

As soon as I know more I'll post again. If I don't get my money back, I'll post all of the details on here (and anywhere else related to scamming to try to prevent others from being caught out) with links to the documentation that I received. If I do get my money back I'll be sure to let everyone know that too...

If these guys are scammers, they deserve recognition for their professionalism!
 
csmikeb

I think I may have been scammed (massively) by APEX Management LTD. Has anyone heard of them before? If I have been scammed, they've done a truly impressive job of it. Large web site, lots of names, faces, telephone numbers, receipts, glossy brochures, regular phone calls and market updates. But having read the posts here, my blood has run cold, because they contacted me, not the other way around.

What is the url of the website?

RIWF
 
riwf said:
csmikeb

I think I may have been scammed (massively) by APEX Management LTD. Has anyone heard of them before? If I have been scammed, they've done a truly impressive job of it. Large web site, lots of names, faces, telephone numbers, receipts, glossy brochures, regular phone calls and market updates. But having read the posts here, my blood has run cold, because they contacted me, not the other way around.

What is the url of the website?

RIWF
Click to expand...

www.a-p-e-x.com
 
Hi Guys,

Mike, If they do send your money back, which i hope they do, keep it! Its quite likely there will be more calls along the lines of "look, we made you a profit, we sent it to you, now we have something now even bigger" followed by "you know we are reliable, we've already sent you your money back before" It's the sprat to catch a mackeral pitch, this is a traditional "ponzi scheme" tied into the stock business, give the odd client their money back to keep the heat at bay, the chance of everyone wanting there money back at the same time is almost zero, and those you do send money to, will send back ten times more. Not heard it for a while, but have been caught on it, I cant say it often enough, keep your money!

As for the other posts about apex and the similar site, some interesting data, on both sites, will comment at the bottom of the post.
First, the apex domain and hosting:
Registration Service Provided By: siteground.com
Contact: [email protected]

Domain name: a-p-e-x.com

Registrant Contact:

Michael Butters ([email protected])
442071981332
Fax:
Albert Buildings, 49 Queen Victoria Street
London, XX EC4N 4SA
GB

Administrative Contact:

Michael Butters ([email protected])
442071981332
Fax:
Albert Buildings, 49 Queen Victoria Street
London, XX EC4N 4SA
GB

Technical Contact:

Michael Butters ([email protected])
442071981332
Fax:
Albert Buildings, 49 Queen Victoria Street
London, XX EC4N 4SA
GB

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
ns1.sgwin3.com
ns2.sgwin3.com

Creation date: 01 Aug 2006 07:43:31
Expiration date: 01 Aug 2007 07:43:31

And now the focus-aim
Name World Internet Solutions, Ltd. - HostingPanama (TM)
Address Main St., Whickhams Cay 1
Address R.G. HODGE Plaza, Second Floor
Address Tortola, N/A
Country VG
CountryCode VG
Domain
Name FOCUS-AIM.COM
UpdatedDate 22-Feb-2007
ExpiresDate 13-Feb-2008
CreatedDate 13-Feb-2007
NameServer NS12.PTYHOST.COM
NameServer NS11.PTYHOST.COM
Status clientTransferProhibited
Registrar
Name TUCOWS, INC.
AdminContact
Name Care Department, Customer
Email [email protected]
Address Main St., Whickhams Cay 1
Address R.G. HODGE Plaza, Second Floor
Address Tortola, N/A
Country VG
CountryCode VG
Phone +50
Fax (7) 2264678 Fax: +50 (7) 2266567
TechContact
Name Center, Network Operations
Email [email protected]
Address Main St., Whickhams Cay 1
Address R.G. HODGE Plaza, Second Floor
Address Tortola, N/A
Country VG
CountryCode VG
Phone +50
Fax (7) 2264357 Fax: +50 (7) 2266567

The interesting thing here is looking at the sites, no doubt they are designed by the same person, the more concerning thing is the one year hosting only, if these sites and companies were here to stay, they would have substantially longer registration times as opposed to just a year.
 
Apex

csmikeb said:
Thanks for your input Looker1 - very valuable. Since my original post, I've had to request my money back - partly in truth because I got "spooked" by the lack of credibility of the OCFDA as a regulatory body and partly because of a change in personal circumstances. When I made that request, it was greeted quickly and politely with an email reply saying that this was not a problem and that the paper work would be sent to me to get the transfer under way.

The paperwork arrived as a PDF attachment from Apex's accounts department and I duly filled it in and faxed it back confirming the details with an email. This was last night (26/04/07). The paperwork looks very official contains all of the legal wording you might expect it to, and was clearly not created just for me, or in a few minutes by an amateur. In short, it all looks very professional (as has every other item of paperwork they've ever sent me).

This morning at 08:09, I had a further email from the accounts department telling me that the request had been received and was being processed. The email contains the following phrase:

"First the funds will need to be certified for release by the U.S. Tax authority once that process is complete, funds will be returned to the co-ordinates specified. Please do not expect your funds to be returned before Monday 7th May. If funds are not received after this date please contact me but not before. "

In all honesty, I would not expect an international transfer of this type (US to UK) to take much less time than that - given that the money has to travel via an intermediary bank - but I guess this could also be a delay to give them time to clear off with the money without me getting too suspicious. Who knows.

Essentially, until the money is either back in my account or until emails and phone calls start going unanswered, I'm not going to know.

I did a fair amount of research in to this before I started - but in my final decision to invest, I relied very heavily on the fact that they were regulated by the OCFDA. Even now, if you do a search for APEX + SCAM on Google, you will get nothing relating to the company I'm dealing with. Remember, I've been dealing with them for 5 months+ so unless I'm the only person that they are dealing with, I'd have thought someone would have posted something somewhere on the Internet by now...

As soon as I know more I'll post again. If I don't get my money back, I'll post all of the details on here (and anywhere else related to scamming to try to prevent others from being caught out) with links to the documentation that I received. If I do get my money back I'll be sure to let everyone know that too...

If these guys are scammers, they deserve recognition for their professionalism!
Click to expand...
I too have been scammed by this company, very similar circumstances to yours, I would be interested in knowing if you get your money back. I have reported the circumstances to the police
 
http://www.vcresearch.info/open/forums.asp?TopicId=7782&ForumId=100

Ok guys, take a look at that link, you will find APEX and HYDROGAIN as you scroll down.

This is from the head of the page.

INTERNATIONAL BOILER ROOM STOCK SCAMS : LIST OF UNREGISTERED SECURITIES FIRMS - (International agencies) : Replies
This list was compiled from the Securities Agencies warnings about Unregistered Brokerage firms (boiler rooms) from Ireland, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, & France
This list is NOT comprehensive. There may be other countries that publish warnings about unregistered (i.e. boiler rooms) securities firms that have firms that are not included here.

Boiler rooms change their names frequently, therefore
1) Many of the firms listed here are no longer being used.
2) New boiler rooms are being created almost daily, and are not on these lists.

If you have any questions, please fee free to contact us.

Bernie Bicoy
VRI Admin

This is a site I have used as a resource from time to time, there are a few out there that are useful like this, many of the boilerrooms used to go for Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa because they were english speaking, and the UK was always seen as off limits because most of these theives that arent american or candian are british, It is illegal for americans and canadians to buy Reg S stock, but not the brits, and the FSA appear to be so slow, so they are taking advantage of it.
 
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