Asset Recovery Ltd Scam

Investors in the StratXMarkets binary option fraud are being contacted by the Asset Recovery Ltd scam.  There is a genuine company called Asset Recovery Ltd, but this scam has nothing to do with them.  The company’s name and address are being used by scammers to add respectability to their scam.

One of our team has spoken to the owner of the genuine Asset Recovery Ltd company. He said this is not the first time the company name has been used by scammers. We are sending him copies of what we have collected and he will report the matter to the authorities.

The Asset Recovery Ltd scam is a follow-on-fraud. The scammers have obtained the list of StratXMarkets investors (names, addresses, emails, phone numbers etc) and are contacting them claiming that they are working with the Insolvency Service to help investors recover their money. In our opinion there is a very good chance that the people behind this scam were also behind the original StratXMarkets scam. Many investors in various binary option scams may not realise that these kinds of scams, although appearing at first sight to be completely separate, were organised and operated by one or two small groups. They were responsible for a lot of the binary option scams. One such group was centred around the Ilford region in Essex. We are on that case.

Here is a typical email from them.

To many investors the email would look quite professional and genuine. However, we know it is a follow-on-fraud for a number of reasons. Some of them we cannot publish because it would make it easier for the scammers in the future, but the main one which identified it as a fraud right from the start is that StratXMarkets has never existed.  Some of the original documents stated that StratXMarkets was a company incorporated in the Marshall Islands. We don’t believe that. The chances are that it never existed at all. All payments made by investors were sent to money mule companies so StratXMarkets never needed its own bank account. What is certain is that StratXMarkets never existed as a UK company. The Insolvency Service only deals with UK companies.

In the Asset Recovery Ltd scam the perpetrators have forged a letter which they claim has come from The Insolvency Service. It is shown below. Later this week we will publish details on another scam which uses a forged letter from the UK’s Inland Revenue Service. We are just waiting for it to be sent through to us by an investor.

Fake Asset Recovery Ltd_Insolvency Service Letter

We have noticed a very sharp rise in the number of follow-on-frauds. We think this is because enforcement authorities around the world are tightening up on scam prevention. For example, in the UK the Financial Conduct Authority has banned the establishment and promotion of unregulated corporate bonds for 12 months while they look into it. This has been a favourite of scammers for a few years. We think scammers are being forced to go back to old lists of investors to try to find ways to steal some more money from them because they are having trouble identifying new opportunities to scam people.