Scammers don’t write bad emails any more. The modern fake broker has a polished website, a licence number that looks right, and a WhatsApp group of “other happy clients” ready to vouch. Here are the five one-minute checks that catch nearly every fraudulent firm before it costs you a cent.<\/p>\n
Every real broker in Europe has a licence number on a national regulator’s register. Look up the number<\/em> on the regulator’s site (not the firm’s) and check that the licence holder’s legal name matches exactly. A hair’s-breadth difference in spelling or a totally different name means the firm is either misrepresenting a licence that belongs to someone else, or has cloned a real firm’s identity.<\/p>\n A WHOIS lookup takes ten seconds. A firm that claims a decade of history and whose website was registered six weeks ago is lying about one of the two.<\/p>\n Before any deposit, see the beneficiary name on the payment page. If it doesn’t match the firm \u2014 say, a payment processor in a third country, or a personal account with a similar-looking name \u2014 walk away.<\/p>\n Fake firms love a stock-photo “board of directors”. A reverse image search on each headshot tells you quickly whether the “team” is actually a stock pack from the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n Reply to the pitch with a polite “I’d like to think about it for two weeks.” A real firm will say that’s fine. A scam will raise the pressure: a limited window, a bonus that expires, a VIP tier you’re about to lose. That reaction is the clearest signal of the lot.<\/p>\n2 \u00b7 Check how old the domain is<\/h2>\n
3 \u00b7 Look at who you’d be paying<\/h2>\n
4 \u00b7 Reverse-search the team photos<\/h2>\n
5 \u00b7 Say “no” and watch the pressure<\/h2>\n