The Group 500 investment scam
Group 500 investment scam; What to do
We are aware there are a large number of victims of an investment scam run by the fraudsters Group 500 (group-500.com). They ran a very sophisticated investment scam that involved fake trading accounts showing fake returns and utilising aggressive sales tactics. The Financial Conduct Authority issued a warning about this firm operating without their authorisation in August 2021.
What happened with Group 500?
Group 500 ran a predominantly phone based operation where they would persuade people to invest with them. Many victims have lost life changing sums of money after being persuaded to deposit it into their Group 500 login. The scammers offered a trading platform that looked life-like with figures moving and deposits displaying in personal trading accounts.
A very large number of victims came forward identifying them as a group of scammers selling fake investments that did not exist. The victims were never able to withdraw their money, and all withdrawal requests were ignored or came with large fictitious withdrawal fees that never unlocked the accounts.
How did the scam work?
The fraudsters placed adverts on search engine’s and on widely used social media websites. Many of the adverts stole the likeness of celebrities in order to give their scam a sense of respectability, and they all contained outright lies about the investments. They used this in order to capture the details of potential victims, driving the sales of the investment through telephone calls.
After making contact, Group 500 would employ aggressive sales tactics over the phone, and typically they would offer a small initial investment to ‘test’ their performance. Once the victims agreed to deposit between £100 and £500, they would be given their Group 500 login where they could see the deposit and the trades taking place. They would display good returns on that small initial investment, and the scammers would then use this to persuade victims to deposit large amounts of money.
Over a period of time, victims would be persuaded to deposit larger and larger sums of money with their accounts showing very large returns. Often, the deposits were made by sending the money through cryptocurrency exchanges. However, once the victims went to withdraw their large profits, the fraudsters would demand fees or stop responding altogether.
Group 500 login
Group 500 supplied customers with a very convincing platform to log in to. However, the whole platform was faked. When customers sent money to Group 500, the scammers would insert the fake deposit onto the platform and then start to perform fake trades. Unfortunately, the scammers can fake everything that goes on in the platform to suit their narrative to try and extract more money from their victims. By showing great returns, customers were encouraged to send more and more money to Group 500. Only when it came to accessing that money did the scammers start to introduce the fake withdrawal fees. This was just a final roll of the dice to extract more money from the victims.
Group 500 withdrawal fees
A tactic used by many fraudulent companies like Group 500 to extract more money at the later stages of the scam is to charge fake withdrawal fees or taxes. These fees or taxes will not have been mentioned previously and they are always designed to be relatively small or seem a reasonable price to pay compared to the victims' fake profits. This is a cruel final throw of the dice by the scammers and unfortunately we see many people who pay these fake fees which never result in the investment returns being paid. In fact, whenever one of these scam withdrawal fees is paid, another fee or tax will soon be invented to try and extract more money from a victim.
Group 500 & Genesis 11
We have reason to believe that this scam company is related to another called Genesis 11. This is because they appear to have accidentally contacted a number of victims across the two scams, indicating they used the same contact list. Refundee is also able to help victims of Genesis 11 which operated in a similar way.
Group 500 scammed what can I do next?
If you have lost money to an investment scam run by Group 500, Refundee can help you get your money back from your bank and you can fill in our fraud claim form for a free consultation. Our fee is 15% plus VAT on anything that we get back, and we don't charge anything if we are not successful. For larger cases, the fee is subject to a maximum of £10k plus VAT per case.
Remember you don’t need to use a company like Refundee, you could work your case yourself for free! If you’d like to get a refund yourself, you can do this by following our bank transfer refund guide.
