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- Alpine Profit
PARTIES INVOLVED: Alpine Profit
ALLEGATIONS: Perjury, Fraud, Impersonation
INCIDENT DATE: 24 Nov 2022
INVESTIGATED BY: Ethan Katz
TOOLS USED: Lumen, FakeDMCA, SecurityTrails
CASE NO: 123701/A/2024
CRIME TYPE: Intellectual Property Scam
PUBLISHED ON: 19 Nov 2024
REPORTED BY: FakeDMCA.com
JURISDICTION: USA
A summary of what happened?
Alpine Profit is an online brokerage platform that has faced widespread criticism and allegations of fraudulent practices. This report delves into the major concerns, complaints, and accusations surrounding the company.
Major Concerns and Allegations
- Unauthorized Financial Services
Alpine Profit is accused of operating financial services without the necessary regulatory authorizations. This raises questions about the legality and transparency of its operations, particularly in jurisdictions requiring strict compliance. - Investor Fraud
Numerous investors have reported significant issues with Alpine Profit, including being unable to withdraw funds or access purported profits. These claims suggest possible fraudulent practices, leaving investors with substantial financial losses. - Censorship of Negative Information
Alpine Profit has been accused of attempting to suppress critical reviews and reports about its operations. Allegations include filing unwarranted takedown notices and other efforts to censor information that exposes its questionable practices. - Lack of Transparency
Investigations highlight that Alpine Profit lacks transparency regarding its corporate structure, ownership, and physical address. This lack of information makes it challenging for investors to assess the company’s legitimacy and reliability. - Negative Reviews and Complaints
Across various platforms, individuals have shared consistent negative experiences, including unresponsive customer service, difficulties with fund withdrawals, and concerns about the authenticity of the platform’s financial dealings.
Alpine Profit has become synonymous with controversy, with numerous allegations and complaints casting doubt on its legitimacy. Investors are advised to exercise caution and conduct extensive research before engaging with platforms that demonstrate questionable practices or lack regulatory oversight. Transparency and accountability remain key indicators of trustworthiness in the financial services sector.
Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)
Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.
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Lumen Database Notice(s) | |
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Fake Link(s) Used by Scammers | |
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What was Alpine Profit trying to hide?
Alpine Profit‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Alpine Profit in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Alpine Profit may be trying to remove from the internet –
Investigative Report: Unmasking Alpine Profit – A Deep Dive into Allegations and Controversies
Introduction
Alpine Profit, an online brokerage platform, has gained notoriety in the financial world for its questionable practices and mounting allegations of fraud. Once presented as a sophisticated investment platform promising lucrative returns, the firm is now embroiled in allegations of regulatory non-compliance, investor deception, and censorship efforts. This investigative report provides a comprehensive analysis of the controversies surrounding Alpine Profit, piecing together reports from regulatory warnings, investor complaints, and online reviews.
Background: The Rise of Alpine Profit
Alpine Profit marketed itself as a cutting-edge brokerage firm offering access to a variety of financial instruments, including stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and forex trading. The platform initially attracted investors with claims of robust analytics, a user-friendly interface, and the promise of high returns. However, despite these outward claims of reliability, a darker narrative began to emerge from dissatisfied clients and regulatory bodies.
The Allegations
- Unauthorized Financial Operations
- Alpine Profit has been accused of operating without necessary financial regulatory licenses. In jurisdictions such as Germany, where financial service providers are strictly regulated, the absence of a license is a significant red flag.
- The firm’s lack of proper registration has drawn the attention of financial authorities, raising concerns about the legitimacy of its operations and the safety of investor funds.
- Fraudulent Practices and Investor Deception
- Numerous individuals have come forward with accounts of being unable to withdraw funds or access supposed profits. Complaints highlight a consistent pattern: investors are encouraged to deposit large sums under the pretext of generating significant returns. However, when they attempt to withdraw their money, they face delays, non-responses, or outright denials.
- Many victims describe aggressive sales tactics, with brokers pressuring them to increase their investments while providing little evidence of actual trading activity or returns.
- Attempts to Suppress Negative Information
- Alpine Profit has been accused of actively censoring critical information about its operations. Allegations include the submission of fraudulent copyright takedown notices and other legal maneuvers aimed at removing negative reviews and reports from the internet.
- This behavior suggests an effort to control public perception and silence whistleblowers or dissatisfied clients, rather than addressing the root causes of complaints.
- Lack of Transparency
- Investigations into Alpine Profit reveal a troubling absence of transparency. The company’s website reportedly lacks essential details about its ownership, corporate structure, and physical address.
- This opacity makes it difficult for investors to verify the firm’s legitimacy, leaving them vulnerable to potential fraud.
- Regulatory Warnings
- Financial regulators in various countries have issued warnings against Alpine Profit, advising consumers to avoid the platform. These warnings often highlight the company’s unauthorized status and the risks associated with dealing with unlicensed firms.
- Regulatory actions have also included investigations into the firm’s activities, with some agencies flagging it as a potential scam.
- Negative Reviews and Consumer Complaints
- Alpine Profit has been the subject of widespread negative feedback on online platforms. Common themes in reviews include unresponsive customer support, unexplained account freezes, and an inability to retrieve funds.
- Clients have reported feeling misled by promises of easy returns, only to realize that their investments were tied up in a seemingly fraudulent scheme.
Case Studies: Victim Stories
Several investors have shared detailed accounts of their experiences with Alpine Profit:
- Investor A: A retiree who invested his life savings after being convinced by an Alpine Profit representative of the potential for low-risk, high-return trading. Despite seeing promising figures on his account dashboard, he was unable to withdraw his funds and eventually lost all access to his account.
- Investor B: A small business owner lured by the platform’s cryptocurrency trading options. After initial successes, she was pressured into reinvesting her profits. When she attempted to withdraw her original deposit, all communication ceased, and her account was locked.
Efforts to Silence Critics
Reports suggest that Alpine Profit has gone to great lengths to suppress critical voices. These tactics include:
- Submitting questionable legal claims to remove negative reviews and articles.
- Using intimidation tactics against whistleblowers who attempt to expose fraudulent practices.
- Leveraging social media and online platforms to create a facade of legitimacy while erasing unfavorable content.
Regulatory Actions and Legal Ramifications
- Multiple financial regulatory agencies have launched investigations into Alpine Profit’s activities, flagging the firm as unregistered and potentially fraudulent.
- Some affected investors have initiated lawsuits against the company, seeking compensation for their losses. However, due to the firm’s lack of transparency and potentially offshore operations, legal recourse has been challenging.
The Bigger Picture: Lessons for Investors
The case of Alpine Profit underscores the importance of due diligence when dealing with online investment platforms. Investors are urged to:
- Verify a firm’s registration and licensing status with relevant financial authorities.
- Be cautious of platforms that pressure for high-value deposits or promise guaranteed returns.
- Avoid firms that lack transparency about their operations and management.
Conclusion
Alpine Profit’s trajectory from a promising online brokerage to a symbol of alleged fraud highlights the risks posed by unregulated financial platforms. The numerous allegations, from unauthorized operations to investor deception, paint a grim picture of a company more focused on exploiting its clients than providing legitimate investment services.
As regulatory investigations continue and more victims come forward, Alpine Profit serves as a cautionary tale for investors worldwide. Transparency, accountability, and compliance with regulatory standards are essential in protecting consumers from similar schemes.
How do we counteract this malpractice?
Once we ascertain the involvement of Alpine Profit (or actors working on behalf of Alpine Profit), we will inform Alpine Profit of our findings via Electronic Mail.
Our preliminary assessment suggests that Alpine Profit may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Alpine Profit, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Alpine Profit to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.
Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –
Since Alpine Profit made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally
We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Alpine Profit is finding out the hard way.
Potential Consequences for Alpine Profit
Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.
Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.
Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.” Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).
Is Alpine Profit Committing a Cyber Crime?
Yes, it seems so. Alpine Profit used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. Alpine Profit could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.
Faced with these limitations, some companies like Alpine Profit have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.
Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Alpine Profit is certainly keeping interesting company here….
The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.
Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.
Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi
The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.
Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.
As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Alpine Profit creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.
The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.
The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.
In committing numerous offences, Alpine Profit either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Alpine Profit, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.
Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.
The Reputation Laundering
Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.
The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.
In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.
This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.
Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Alpine Profit is in great company ….
What else is Alpine Profit hiding?
We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Alpine Profit] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)
To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Alpine Profit that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].
All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.
Credits and Acknowledgement
Many thanks to FakeDMCA.com and Lumen for providing access to their database.
Photos and Illustrations provided by DALL-E 3 – “a representation of Alpine Profit censoring the internet and committing cyber crimes.”
- We’ve reached out to Alpine Profit for a comment or rebuttal regarding this investigation. It will strongly suggest they were behind the takedown attempt if they remain silent.
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- Our investigative report on Alpine Profit‘s efforts to suppress online speech is significant, as it raises serious concerns about its integrity. The findings suggest that Alpine Profit has engaged in questionable practices, including potential perjury, impersonation, and fraud, in a misguided attempt to manage or salvage its reputation.
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- We intend to file a counternotice to reinstate the removed article(s). While this particular instance is relatively straightforward, it is important to note that, in other cases, the overwhelming volume of automated DMCA takedown notices can significantly hinder the ability of affected parties to respond—especially for those not large media organizations.
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- You need an account with fakeDMCA.com and Lumen to access the research data. However, accounts are not widely available since these non-profit organisations manage large databases that could be susceptible to misuse. Nevertheless, they do offer access to non-profits and researchers.
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- It’s unclear why U.S. authorities have yet to act against these rogue reputation agencies, whose business model seems rooted in fraudulent practices.
- We’ve reached out to Alpine Profit for a comment or rebuttal regarding this investigation. It will strongly suggest they were behind the takedown attempt if they remain silent.
About the Author
The author is affiliated with Harvard University and serves as a researcher at both Lumen and FakeDMCA.com. In his personal capacity, he and his team have been actively investigating and reporting on organized crime related to fraudulent copyright takedown schemes. Additionally, his team provides advisory services to major law firms and is frequently consulted on matters pertaining to intellectual property law. He can be reached at [email protected] directly.
References used for this investigation
- 1
- https://lumendatabase.org/notices/29676349
- 24/11/2022
- Other
- 2
- https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/alpine-profit-enttaeuschende-erfahrungen-mit-broker-opfer-draengen-auf-auszahlung-205562.html
- 28/10/2024
- Review
- 3
- https://www.personal-reviews.com/2022/02/alpine-profit-review-alpineprofit-com-scam/
- 13/11/2024
- Review
- 4
- https://fraudnotify.com/brokery/alpine-profit-review/
- 01/10/2023
- Review
- 5
- https://trust-radar.com/reviews/alpineprofit/
- 17/08/2023
- Review
- 6
- https://medium.com/@stootmammie2/alpine-profit-review-alpineprofit-com-100-scam-d6048a388f71
- 02/01/2023
- Review
- 7
- https://www.propfirmmatch.com/unlisted-prop-firms/alpine-funded
- 15/02/2024
- Adverse Media
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by: Isabella Walker
Very Wrost Firm they have many rule because they don't want that client request withdrawal. Pleas stay away from them
by: Ava Thomas
Accounts are getting locked, and users can’t access their money. They seriously need to do something to fix these issues and allow people to use the platform. Orelse they are trapping people.
Cons
by: William Miller
One of the worst trading conditions in any prop firm. They change the rules to suit themselves, making it nearly impossible to succeed.