Welcome to my critical examination of Control-Finance, the scam that wants to look legit so hard it seems to be successful.
Disclaimer: The links provided are my personal referral links.
Review
General information
I wrote about this investment platform called Control Finance a couple of weeks ago asking the community about it. Unfortunately, the post remained unnoticed. After doing some research on my own, I decided to take the plunge and invest 150$ in it. Sometimes I can be quite adventurous, as you can see.
Control-Finance has been around for around 3 months. As the website explains, they use your investment to trade on the crypto market, and you get a daily percentage of your deposit back. Control-Finance (CF) state they do their trading manually and even publish weekly reports of profits which can be found here. The company seems transparent about its income; it is officially registered in the UK, and its owners show their faces. You can find their information and video appearances on the website.
Red flags
Of course, that doesn’t mean it is not a scam. In fact, despite showing their faces, the owners never identify themselves, and the company has nothing else to show beyond the anonymous documents registered to an office building address in Manchester. Its profit-making traders remain unknown, and the company doesn’t seem to be regulated by any external financial institution. In other words, they are free to do with your money what they want. Their trade reports could easily be fabricated - it doesn’t take a lot of know-how to place buy-sell dots in the juiciest locations on a candle stick graph. As far as their publicity goes, a lot of Internet and real life scams do that, so no, it doesn’t count in my book.
Support
Support is available 24/7 and is eager to help with simple questions of how to deposit or withdraw your money. Something more complicated than that puts them in a loop: you can wait for 10 minutes for them to answer and then type another “hello?” to check if they are still there and get a sincere “Hi! How can I help you?” again. In the same chat window. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a screenshot of that irritating exchange, but here is another one.
As you can see, the final answer I was provided with is a copy and paste of the text from the website footer.
Well, at least they promise to return your money. That’s reassuring. =)
To give them credit, basic terms of service are available on registration. “Basic” is the keyword here. There is nothing about obligations of CF towards you and your deposit other than the statement that you do not own your deposit but only own the daily interest off of it. I will talk below what risk it translates to.
Affiliate program
If the above are not red flags enough for you, there is this extremely generous referral program of 5 (or is it 7 now?) tiers. Additionally, ostensibly surfing on the high wave of success, the maximum deposit has been increased from 30000$ to 50000$. This makes monthly payouts to whoever is willing to put this much in around 22000$. Can you count how many crypto-ponzi adventurers like me with our measly 150$ investments it will take to pay them off every month? Seriously, those trading reports had better be true.
Is it really that bad?
Well, there is hope. Small, tiny, little but hope. You see, a small number of what I perceived as reliable reviews out there (meaning not from the people annoying hyping it up after only a few days of investment or lucky referral profits) were also split on the question. Some believe that at the current interest rate of 1%, provided that they really do the trading, the program can be sustainable for a period of time longer than a year. Not as good as the promised perpetual return on your investment, but long enough to make actual profit. Meaning if you are planning to jump in, you probably have a good chance to make a little profit because they have only been around under 4 months.
An important question
Is it ethically right to support a scheme that is likely to hurt its customers in the future? Well, if you are a good crypto investor or trader, that’s exactly what you do anyway – you buy coins from losers selling them cheap and then resell those coins to other losers at a higher price. Bet you never thought about trading like this, did you? =)
My experience
As it can be expected at this stage, I am able to withdraw my earnings. Other people reported withdrawals were very fast, and I can confirm it I got mine within 15 minutes. I choose to withdraw money on the days when BitCoin is cheap, so I get more value for it (the withdrawals are made at the recent exchange rate).
Check the picture below.
What can I expect if I invest? What are the risks?
Whatever you invest, you’re looking at a 3 months’ risk period, give or take a week. You cannot withdraw your funds – you can only get your money back through daily interest. You can calculate what that will be like here. Assuming the company goes belly up in the next 2 months and doesn’t return your investment as it promises, you will lose 30% of whatever you will invest today. If you choose to add new deposits monthly at a rate of 100$, for example, the return on investment period will extend to roughly 6 months, making it a 6-month long risk period.
Best way to invest “safely”?
I feel Control-Finance has enough steam to run for a few months, but you know the drill with any investment or trading opportunity – spend only what you can afford to lose. Be realistic – you are unlikely to get a full year out of this. Withdraw your funds regularly, and wait for 4 months before depositing anything else. By the end of the third month, you should break even, and you can consider investing all or part of your 4th month return into the following month. This is the safest way albeit not the most profitable if you start with a small deposit.
And look on the bright side. Even if you manage to scalp that one month (4th month) worth of profit, it is a lot bigger return than any bank would pay you. Be positive. And don’t tell too many people you are doing this because people are hypocrites.
Conclusion
If you have a high tolerance for risk, then by all means give this a shot – it is quite a thrilling experience, I must say. There is money to be made, and there will be winners and there will be losers. As is the case with every investment in life, your decision is a leap of faith to one degree or another.
If you would like to sign up, please consider signing up using my referral link below. Why? Because that way there is a better chance that at least one of us (me, more specifically) will get away without losing any money. If worst comes to worst and you end up bummed about losing your hard-earned cash, at least you will know you helped somebody with it (heck, I might even compensate some of your losses if I manage to go in the green).
I will write another update at the end of the next month and will keep you updated until I reach the profit threshold.
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