Top 10 suspected financial scams according to SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently released a list of the top suspected financial scams as of July 2015, following several reports of investors victimized by different scams.

Many of these financial scams are pyramid scams. Pyramid scams are illegal and very risky with their “get-rich-quick” schemes. Naturally, getting rich without much effort attracts many investors. Who wouldn’t want to double or triple a small investment? Imagine a thousand pesos turning to ten thousand in just a few days. But SEC has warned against these scams since they involve promising participants payment or services, primarily for recruiting other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public. In the few cases there are products involved to make them seem legit, at the end of the day, the investor is still required to recruit new members to keep up with the ever-growing financial needs of the company.

SEC has listed the following as scams to warn investors of the possible losses they might incur and to share the experiences of those who have come out as victims. SEC warns the public to be very careful in choosing where to invest and advises them to be meticulous in doing background checks and verifying registration and licenses to operate. It never hurts to do extra research before investing your hard-earned money.

Now we list the top 10 scams as identified and reported by SEC. Investors and would-be investors, read up!

1. EmGoldex Philippines

The Dubai-based firm gets investors [mostly overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) at first] to buy gold online and pays bonuses to those who refer friends and acquaintances. Emgoldex Philippines promises high returns to its investors: P1,000 could become P5,000 to P10,000. A P35,000 investment could return as P180,000 or even up to P360,000. If you don’t want the cash, you just opt for the gold chips which you can sell when you see fit. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, SEC says it is. The unregistered Emgoldex Philippines doesn’t even have an office which proves the shady undertakings of the company.

What the investors didn’t know is that they couldn’t earn anything if they didn’t recruit anybody. It’s not as simple as putting money in and getting it back tenfold. Investors have to recruit at least 14 people before he can move up and these people have to have recruits as well.