How the scam works / Evidence it’s a scam

IFW Global has been monitoring the activities of a boiler room investment scam group based in Southeast Asia using various “virtual companies” to swindle investors in Australia and other countries. One of these financial groups called itself “MB Partners”, which previously operated the website www.mbpcorporation.com. If you are a victim of this scam, please contact IFW immediately. 

MB Partners contacted potential investors wanting to invest in the share markets. The scammers claimed to be a Tokyo-based firm advising in “Options Trading”. Fraudsters associated with MB Partners entice investors with opportunities to purchase fake shares from well-known Australian companies such as Telstra. 

The fraudsters will have investors complete an advisory application, which includes questions about your details and risk appetite. The conversations are friendly and respectful, as you would expect to encounter with any real investment firm. 

The fraudsters will share a slick looking company brochure to build the image of ‘MB Partners’ and will publish fake news headlines about their successes, using a variety of online publishing platforms. Some of these fake articles end up being published on major websites such as Yahoo Finance.

Once the fraudster has the investor intrigued, they will urge them to invest in a hedge fund. The fraudster will depict the appearance of being highly versed in this area of investment and will guarantee a return for every dollar invested into the fund. Once the fraudsters identify indications of resistance or the investor wants to withdraw funds from the investments, they will claim more fees to be paid, such as fake taxes and exorbitant exit fees. When these additional fees are paid, the fraudsters will quit all communications and become unreachable.

Boiler Room scam

These types of investment frauds are commonly known as “boiler room” investment scams and are usually carried out by professional con artists, confident tricksters, and fraudsters who use fake names and mask their real locations and identities, whilst purporting to be hotshot brokers for a premium investment firms, usually based somewhere in Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe. 

The money paid by the investor is never traded or invested. The funds are immediately stolen and laundered through “laundering agents” and “bankers” who take a commission for moving the money around the world, ultimately ending up either in cash, luxury assets, or in the personal accounts of the fraud masterminds.

The boiler room fraud industry is successful because of the international cross-border nature of this type of investment fraud. Many of the groups and suspects involved in this fraudulent activity are based in Southeast Asia but other boiler room operations have been uncovered in Spain, Cyprus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, South Africa, and Israel.

Next steps

If you have been targeted by the MB Partners or Insolvency Practitioners 4U financial scam, it’s important to follow the below steps immediately:

• Do not invest any more money.
• Report your fraud via the Australian Cyber Security Centre https://www.cyber.gov.au/ fraud reporting portal as soon as possible.
• Submit an investment fraud enquiry to IFW Global to discover what we can do to recover your assets. 

IFW Global are specialist in the investigation of international cross-border investment fraud and asset recovery in foreign jurisdictions. 

IFW utilises advanced surveillance and investigation methods to combat cybercrime and track down victims’ money. Learn more about our fraud recovery services today.

Fake news article

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mb-partners-outlines-rapid-growth-000000833.html