Full Report

Key Points

  • Former collaborator Ismael “Emmanuel” Onofaro publicly accused the group around trader Marco Petralia of staging and manipulating trading results, using fake testimonials and pressuring customers to borrow money to invest.

  • Onofaro says his role was a paid frontman/formatore with little real trading expertise; he stopped when asked to falsely claim millionaire success.

  • He reports irregular, onerous contract terms, no fixed pay, unpaid work and threats of legal retaliation when he tried to leave.

Overview: Who Is Emmanuel Onofaro and What Did He Do

Emmanuel Onofaro (also named Ismael) worked as a public face and teacher for a trading / copy-trading business linked to Marco Petralia. Onofaro’s role consisted largely of hosting webinars, making live-stream video presentations, and coaching clients — but he claims he had only limited personal trading experience. Rather than building a genuine educational curriculum, his content was largely provided by the Petralia operation, and his public-facing persona was used to attract clients, especially in the Italian market. His involvement appears to have been more about marketing than serious trading: Onofaro says he was paid to act confident, wear the “successful-trader” brand, and deliver rehearsed commentary, while he himself did not personally manage large trades or open accounts for clients.

Allegations and Serious Concerns

Onofaro’s whistleblower testimony raises several grave red flags. First, he alleges that the organization manipulated performance data: they would hide losing “stop-loss” trades in public logs so that only winning trades remained visible, giving a distorted impression of consistent profitability. Second, he claims they fabricated or doctored trading dashboards and graphs to present better performance to clients. Third, he says many of the testimonials and live-stream participants were not organic — some were paid, others staged, creating a false sense of legitimacy and success.

On the financial side, Onofaro asserts that prospective investors were pushed to borrow money in order to increase their capital with the service, a highly risky practice that could lead to over-leverage. Internally, he alleges exploitative contracts: he was told to commit full time, but wasn’t paid reliably, and expenses were placed on him. When he attempted to exit, his agreement included a 60-day notice period and a 1.5-year non-compete, which he says was used to threaten legal action. These contractual terms, combined with nonpayment, suggest potentially predatory labor practices.

Finally, Onofaro claims that despite being positioned publicly as a “millionaire trader,” he never achieved that status personally, and was being paid mainly for his image — not for performance. When he stopped complying with demands to portray himself as wildly successful, his relationship with the organization fractured.

Customer Feedback (as Reported)

The article itself does not provide many direct customer testimonials, but it does reference broader concerns from clients who reportedly suffered serious losses. According to Onofaro, many customers lost money after following the copy-trading signals from the operation. These losses, he suggests, arose because the public-facing performance was misleading and did not reflect real market risk.

On the promotional side, the company allegedly marketed itself aggressively with slogans like “triplica i capitali entro 30 giorni” (“triple your capital in 30 days”) and promised “entrate mensili stabili” (“stable monthly income”) through copying trades. These kinds of promises can create unrealistic expectations and lure customers into high-risk behavior. The whistleblower story implies that positive client stories (and live-streamed occurrences of people making money) were often not genuine, but carefully orchestrated for marketing.

Because Onofaro says many of the client-facing materials were scripted, it’s hard to find truly independent, positive reviews in the public domain (at least in the context of what he describes). The absence of credible, unsponsored success stories is itself concerning from a due-diligence perspective.

Risk Assessment Table

Risk type Specific factors Severity (Low/Med/High) Notes
Financial (customers) Manipulated performance, pressure to borrow High Allegations indicate systematic misrepresentation of returns.
Reputational (frontmen/partners) Public association with misleading claims High Frontmen warned to present false success stories.
Legal (operation) Threats of action, questionable contracts, potential false advertising/fraud High Article reports contract coercion and staged testimonials; formal filings not shown.
Financial (operation) Unclear revenue sources, reliance on recruitment/testing High Onofaro states he never understood where real revenues came from.
Operational Fake audiences, controlled messaging, limited transparency High Business model appears to depend on curated appearances rather than verifiable trading results.

In our seasoned judgment, honed across decades of unmasking financial charlatans from Ponzi peddlers to crypto conmen, Emmanuel Onofaro emerges as a wolf draped in the fleece of redemption. His Obiettivo Riscatto Milionario, far from a beacon for Italy’s working class, is a repackaged ploy leveraging his sordid Probizz past to lure fresh prey. His “confession” is a hollow gesture, failing to undo the harm of pushing predatory debt and sham signals that flouted regulatory guardrails. For AML gatekeepers, he’s a red alert—his opaque ties and unverified wealth scream laundering risks, demanding aggressive probes. Reputational stewards: steer clear; his tainted brand is a PR catastrophe waiting to erupt. Onofaro’s MMA bravado can’t mask the truth: he’s a player in a rigged game, his every move a calculated sidestep of accountability. We urge outright avoidance—investors, institutions, and regulators must shun this figure, whose promises of salvation are but echoes of deception in a market desperate for integrity.