AssetShot

A summary of what happened?

AssetShot is an offshore brokerage firm offering trading services across various financial instruments, including forex, indices, metals, energies, futures, and shares. The company is registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a jurisdiction known for its lack of stringent financial regulations.

Major Concerns and Complaints:

1. Lack of Regulation:
   • AssetShot operates without oversight from reputable financial regulatory bodies. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK has issued warnings against AssetShot, indicating that the firm is unauthorized to provide financial services.
2. Withdrawal Issues:
   • Numerous clients have reported difficulties in withdrawing funds. Complaints highlight that after depositing money, attempts to withdraw are often met with delays or outright refusals. Some users allege that the company imposes unreasonable conditions, such as high trading volume requirements, before processing withdrawals.
3. Bonus Schemes with Unfavorable Terms:
   • AssetShot offers trading bonuses that come with stringent terms and conditions. Clients have reported that accepting these bonuses obligates them to meet high trading volume targets before they can withdraw any funds, effectively trapping their investments.
4. High Spreads and Hidden Fees:
   • The broker advertises spreads starting from 2.8 pips for Bronze account holders, which is significantly higher than the industry average. Such high spreads can erode potential profits for traders.
5. Misleading Information:
   • AssetShot’s website and promotional materials have been criticized for providing misleading information regarding their services and regulatory status. This lack ofes concerns about the firm’s credibility and trustworthiness.

Given these concerns, potential investors are advised to exercise caution and conduct thorough due diligence before engaging with AssetShot. Opting for brokers regulated by reputable financial authorities can provide a higher level of security and investor protection.

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.

What was AssetShot trying to hide?

AssetShot‘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 AssetShot in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information AssetShot may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: The Troubling Reality Behind AssetShot

Introduction

AssetShot, an offshore brokerage offering trading services across forex, indices, commodities, and shares, has garnered significant attention—not for its performance, but for the growing list of complaints and allegations against it. Registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a jurisdiction notorious for lenient financial regulations, AssetShot has become a focal point of investor concerns. This investigative report delves into the allegations, negative reviews, and potential risks associated with AssetShot, painting a comprehensive picture of its operations and controversies.

Background of AssetShot

AssetShot positions itself as a comprehensive trading platform, providing access to global markets through a range of financial instruments. While the platform advertises competitive account types and features such as trading bonuses, its operations are marked by a lack of regulatory oversight, opaque policies, and questionable practices.

The company is registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where the Financial Services Authority explicitly states that it does not regulate forex brokers. This registration serves as a red flag, given the jurisdiction’s reputation as a haven for unregulated brokers seeking to avoid stricter financial oversight.

Major Concerns and Allegations

1. Lack of Regulatory Compliance

• No Valid Regulation: AssetShot operates without authorization from credible financial regulatory bodies such as the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission), or CySEC (Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission). This lack of oversight exposes investors to heightened risks of financial loss and fraud.
• Warnings from Regulators: The FCA has issued an official warning against AssetShot, stating that the firm is unauthorized to provide financial services in the UK. Such warnings underscore the broker’s dubious operations and serve as a cautionary signal for potential investors.

2. Withdrawal Issues

• Blocked Withdrawals: Numerous users have reported an inability to withdraw funds after making deposits. Complaints reveal a pattern where withdrawal requests are delayed or denied, often with no clear justification.
• Unreasonable Conditions: AssetShot has been accused of imposing stringent conditions on withdrawals. Clients who accept trading bonuses are reportedly required to meet unrealistically high trading volumes before they can access their funds, effectively trapping their money on the platform.

3. Exploitative Bonus Schemes

• Misleading Offers: AssetShot attracts traders with bonus offers that come with restrictive terms. For instance, users must achieve specific trading volume thresholds—sometimes as high as 30 times the bonus amount—before they are eligible to withdraw either the bonus or their own funds.
• Entrapment of Funds: Clients who accept these bonuses often find themselves unable to meet the conditions, leaving their investments locked indefinitely.

4. High Spreads and Hidden Fees

• Uncompetitive Trading Costs: AssetShot advertises spreads starting from 2.8 pips for Bronze account holders, significantly higher than the industry average of 1 to 1.5 pips. These high spreads diminish profit margins for traders, making the platform unattractive to serious investors.
• Undisclosed Charges: Clients have also reported additional hidden fees that are not transparently disclosed on the platform, further eroding trust in the broker.

5. Misleading and Opaque Practices

• False Claims: AssetShot’s marketing materials have been criticized for providing misleading information about the broker’s services and regulatory status. For instance, the platform presents itself as a trustworthy brokerage while concealing its unregulated status.
• Lack of Transparency: Information about the company’s leadership, operational headquarters, and financial safeguards is notably absent, making it difficult for clients to verify the legitimacy of its operations.

User Complaints and Experiences

Testimonials of Losses

• Many users have come forward with harrowing accounts of losing their investments due to AssetShot’s practices. Common complaints include blocked withdrawals, arbitrary account suspensions, and poor customer service.
• One user reported that after depositing $5,000, their account was flagged for suspicious activity when they attempted a withdrawal. Despite repeated inquiries, the issue remained unresolved.

Customer Support Failures

• Users consistently describe AssetShot’s customer support as unresponsive and ineffective. Queries about account issues or withdrawals often go unanswered, leaving clients frustrated and helpless.

Legal and Ethical Implications

1. Potential Violations

• By operating without regulatory approval and engaging in practices that restrict withdrawals, AssetShot may be in violation of consumer protection laws in several jurisdictions. While offshore registration shields the company from certain legal actions, regulatory agencies are increasingly targeting unregulated brokers that operate internationally.

2. Exploitation of Regulatory Loopholes

• AssetShot’s registration in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines allows it to exploit weak regulatory frameworks, evading accountability while continuing operations. This exploitation highlights the broader issue of unregulated brokers preying on uninformed traders.

Warnings from Industry Experts

Broker Reviews

• Industry review sites such as ForexBrokerz and The Forex Review have labeled AssetShot as a potential scam, citing its lack of regulation, unethical practices, and poor client feedback.
• Wikifx, a platform that rates brokers based on reliability, has flagged AssetShot with an abysmally low score, reflecting its numerous red flags.

Expert Advice

• Financial experts recommend avoiding unregulated brokers like AssetShot, emphasizing the importance of choosing platforms with strong regulatory backing. Clients are advised to conduct thorough due diligence and prioritize brokers licensed by reputable authorities.

Broader Implications

The allegations against AssetShot reflect a larger issue in the forex and trading industry: the proliferation of unregulated brokers exploiting retail investors. These entities undermine trust in the financial market, disproportionately affecting inexperienced traders who are often unaware of the risks.

Recommendations for Potential Traders

• Verify Regulation: Always confirm that a broker is licensed by a reputable financial authority before investing.
• Read Terms Carefully: Understand the terms and conditions associated with bonuses and withdrawals to avoid entrapment.
• Research User Feedback: Look for consistent patterns in user reviews and complaints to identify potential risks.
• Start Small: Begin with minimal investments to test a platform’s credibility and withdrawal processes.

Conclusion

AssetShot’s operations, marred by allegations of unethical practices, withdrawal issues, and a lack of regulatory oversight, position it as a high-risk broker. While the platform markets itself as a gateway to global trading opportunities, the overwhelming evidence of client dissatisfaction and potential misconduct suggests otherwise.

For those considering trading with AssetShot, the message is clear: proceed with extreme caution. Opting for regulated brokers with transparent operations and positive reputations is essential to safeguarding investments and ensuring a fair trading experience.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of AssetShot (or actors working on behalf of AssetShot), we will inform AssetShot of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that AssetShot may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from AssetShot, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to AssetShot 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 AssetShot 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 AssetShot is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for AssetShot

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 AssetShot Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. AssetShot 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. AssetShot 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 AssetShot 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. AssetShot 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 AssetShot 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, AssetShot either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about AssetShot, 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. AssetShot is in great company ….

What else is AssetShot hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [AssetShot] + {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 AssetShot 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.