Maxon Global

While legitimate companies may make cold sales calls, be this over the telephone or via the internet with a view to selling a cornucopia of investment options, it can not be understated that you must know with whom are dealing. Remember, all that glitters is not gold.

False investment companies will be able to send you the most detailed and highly polished brochures. Website addresses will lead you to the smiling faces of company members and contain investment advice and history.

Take one case recently reported to us where http://www.maxonglobal.com/asset-management.htm is shown as the website of one such fictitious company.

In this instance a potential customer/victim was contacted by telephone and then sent a glossy magazine profiling the company. In reality the website was entirely false, contents, including details of staff members had been cut and pasted from a legitimate company’s website.

Furthermore, the company attempted to present a reputable standing by claiming membership of a trade organisation.

This trade organisation was quoted as the Offshore Financial Services Association.

If you conduct a worldwide search on Google, of the “Offshore Financial Services Association” you will receive only one hit www.o-fsa.org/.

This solitary hit leads you, not unsurprisingly, to the Offshore Financial Services Association based in Switzerland, which does seem exceptionally strange for an association that claims to have three decades of experience.

The telephone number provided upon the site does not work.

The upshot of such examples is that essential checks need to be made.

The true existence of such companies or trade organisations must be established. Just as a false or hijacked company website may be erected with the utmost simplicity, then so may that of a trade organisation. The moral of this tale is that checks can and must be made through reputable and well known sources.