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On my trading platform(TCI-Investment), I've received a message from security, that I must pay an insurance fee of 25% cause they thinking I'm trading with insider information.

"Starting from the October 30 of the current financial year, all trading activities have been suspended on your account. You need to pay insurance in order to unlock your own account, have access to trading operations and withdrawal systems.

According to the rules of our trading platform, you must pay an insurance fee of 25% of the total balance in order to get access to trading operations and withdrawal systems. These fees cannot be deducted from your deposited funds as they are already frozen so we can only process your transfers.
This is a one-time bonus that is refundable. The insurance premium is withheld for 31 calendar days. After 31 days, the insurance amount will be available to you on your balance. The insurance payment should only be sent to the BTC wallet of your account. Please do not transfer money to addresses of third parties that are not provided by our terminal support. As soon as the payment of the insurance payment is successfully processed please send us a screenshot of the completed transaction with the amount and address of your TCI wallet as the recipient. Access to all functionality of the trading terminal will be returned in 24 hours."

Is this a scam or what?

mhoran_psprep
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Liver Makentoshe
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5 Answers5

91

Yes it is a scam. Any money you "invested" on this platform is gone.

Edit: Reasons why I believe this is a scam:

  • Insider trading is a crime. A legit platform would involve authorities and.
  • The insurance does not make sense at all
  • How would they suspect you of having access to insider information?
  • Why are they handling official payments through BTC?

That is why I believe, not only the insurance being fraudulent, but also the trading platform.

QEDemonstrandum
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83

It is a scam because of several red flags:

  • They want you to pay more money to get access to your money.
  • They want their fee in crypto.
  • They want a screen capture as proof.
  • They want you to wait many days to get your money back.
mhoran_psprep
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15

There's no such thing as "insider trading insurance" (or whatever it is they're claiming you need to purchase). Insider trading is a felony subject to criminal penalties (potentially including substantial prison time), not an insurable event. If you really could get out of insider trading allegations just by buying insurance, people like Raj Rajaratnam presumably would have done so in order to avoid prison time.

It's not even clear what's being insured or how that sort of insurance is supposed to work. My car insurance pays for repairs if I get in a car accident. My health insurance pays my medical bills if I get sick. What does insider trading insurance do - serve the jail time for the person who buys it? Do they also offer bank robbery insurance for 25% of the amount you intend to steal?

Also, "one-time bonus" doesn't make any sense in this context - they clearly don't know what that term means. Dictionary.com defines a bonus as,

1.something given or paid over and above what is due.
2. a sum of money granted or given to an employee, a returned soldier, etc., in addition to regular pay, usually in appreciation for work done, length of service, accumulated favors, etc.

In other words, a bonus is something you receive over and above what you would normally receive, not something you pay over and above what you would normally owe. I think that they meant "one-time fee".

So yes, 100% a scam. If you pay the "insurance fee", they'll probably come up with some other fee that you need to pay before you can access your money.

EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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5

Read up on "pig butchering" here or here The entire trading platform is likely fraudulent.

(Definition from one of those: "So named in reference to the practice of fattening a pig before slaughter, these scams often involve fraudsters contacting targets seemingly at random, then gaining trust before ultimately manipulating their targets into phony investments and disappearing with the funds.")

keshlam
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Packetboy
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tciinvestment.com is a known scammer. There are many reports of denied payouts. Best to get the cops involved.

Source:

https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/betrug-bei-tcm-investments-tcminvestments-com-erfahrungen-zur-auszahlung-212525.html

Joooeey
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