How to avoid being duped when exchanging currencies
The number of electronic payment systems users is exponentially growing due to the fact that electronic commerce makes the life of the modern human being a lot easier allowing for payments and transfers to be made from home. For the very same reasons, electronic currencies have to be exchanged.
Just like in any other sphere of human interactions, currency exchange is teeming with shady players who will stop at nothing in their pursuit of ill-gotten gains. Every single day they come up with even more sophisticated scams. Newcomers may have a hard time figuring out who to trust.
First of all, we need to mention that currency can be exchanged in two ways - either with the help of electronic currency exchangers or with the help of individuals who provide such services.
Not all currency exchangers are honest by definition. Every once in a while, information about some exchanger offering suspiciously low exchange rates surfaces. In such a case, exchange rates monitor OKchanger launches an investigation into the subject in order to either confirm or refute the allegations.
If a monitor doesn't provide any information on an exchanger, you should try to find that information by yourself with the help of a search engine (such as Google). If the exchanger is dishonest indeed, you will see quite a bit of unflattering comments about it.
One of the most widely used scam techniques is the offer to make money on exchangers: exchange currency with the help of an exchanger and then exchange in the opposite direction at a better rate. Such offers are always scams. Under this scheme, exchangers follow through on the first part of the bargain which tranquilizes the client's vigilance, but the money doesn't come back as the result of the second transaction.
Exchange tête-à-tête
Some people due to different reasons prefer exchanging currencies by themselves, without any middlemen such as exchangers. The reasons may be a lack of needed currency pairs or too high exchange rates. If it is the case, one should be extremely cautious.
Ask the person who is offering their service to show you their certificates. Such certificates must be personal, wth a business level no lower than 20-30 points, but it is no silver bullet, though.
Use whatever indicators you can to find information about a potential partner: nickname, identification number, e-mail address - everything works. If any of those credentials were ever involved in fraud, you will learn that from search engines.
A truly honest person won't try to frantically prove their honesty. He will say "if you don't want to do it, just don't do it", and won't tell you to ask others who could attest to his good intentions.
Sometimes scammers pretend to be somebody else they are not. If you are a user of a forum or other platform, scammers can send you a message in which they can call themselves members of the administration or the support service. You can check it for yourself - find the real profiles of those members and ask the supposed scammer to make changes to the real profile. Although, sometimes administrators themselves can be hacked, but this simple but effective request will scare the scammer off.
You should pay attention to the overall intellectual level of the potential partner: shady deeds are usually perpetrated by young and not very intelligent people, which you might be able to tell by the way they speak.
Rushing is the favorite manipulation technique of most scammers. If someone is trying to rush things, be sure to say "goodbye, I'm not in a hurry".
There are people who act as a "middle ground" in all kinds of deals. They are called guarantors. Parties give over their parts of the bargain to the guarantor, who then distributes them accordingly. The guarantor takes a percentage of the bargain as a service cost, though. But, as you may know, cheapest is dearest.
Posted on
12 September 2016
