Fraud Protection
Financial scams have repeated with remarkably little variation for over a hundred years. Know the patterns, and you'll recognize almost all of them within minutes.
The Ponzi scheme
In a Ponzi scheme, earlier investors get paid from later investors' deposits. It works as long as more money comes in than goes out, and then necessarily collapses.
Pump and dump
A group buys a thinly traded asset, generates attention, and sells to the buyers it attracted. The losses fall exclusively on whoever came last.
Rug pull
A crypto project's creators withdraw the raised capital and disappear. The warning signs are publicly visible before buying, if you know what to look for.
Gurus and signal groups
Anyone who could reliably make money trading would have no economic reason to sell courses or signals. That one consideration exposes most of this market.
Checking a provider
Four checks in a fixed order, done in a few minutes, that rule out the large majority of disreputable offers.
If the money's already gone
The most important steps in the first days: pay nothing further, document everything, contact your bank and the police, and ignore offers of supposed recovery services.