But how can you tell if a company is suspicious? There are no hard and fast rules. Bernie Madoff had alerts raised about him to the authorities as early as 1999. It took until 2008 before his scheme was uncovered. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLP was founded in 1960. What should have been a respectable, long established, regulated financial company spent almost a decade cheating their customers before getting caught. There is potential that this happened from the outset, as far back as 1960, when this company was first founded. With Crypto being a relatively new concept and a fast moving market, companies will not have an established reputation that dates back years or decades. So what are some of these suspicious signals you might be able to pick up if you DYOR (Do Your Own Research) on a company?
· How long has the company been established?
· Is there a website? Does it look professional with no spelling or grammar mistakes?
· Is there a physical address/phone number?
· Who is involved? Do they provide photos or bios of the staff/management?
· Do they have a customer service contact?
Contact the company. Take advantage of the services they offer and ask them the questions you want answering.
You may find that they pretend to offer all of these facilities to you, just that the customer services team don’t respond to you immediately.
Or the phone number doesn’t work anymore.
Maybe the address looks like a hairdresser rather than the plush offices you might expect to see several multi-millionaires working from. Does the building look like it contains philanthropists who are very busy generously dispensing their wealth to complete strangers?
Don’t always trust what you see at first sight. The scammers have these details are displayed for a reason – it makes things look legitimate. They rely on you being lazy and not investigating them any further.