Swiss Key Equity Scam?!?

Reaper

utu wrote: »

Cripes! that is concerning.
I know it's all gone.
But can we sell these shares through the original registrar (Regional something)? through the company or through another agent? and hey Reaper, thanks for your comments, yes I feel stupid. Got any advice we can use? Seriously.

Can't give you much advice. At least they sold you real shares. You will just have to hope after the lock-in period they have done ok, you might get lucky.

There are various scams, the most common one is "pump and dump" when the scammers buy shares themselves, then persuade everybody else to do the same saying it is a hot tip. When the price rises they can sell theirs leaving everybody else with over-priced shares.

Sometimes the companies being promoted can be in on the act. If they are desperate to sell shares and raise capital they might quietly pay a boiler room company to promote them. I do wonder about Total Apparel as apparently they were saying it was all above board even after Swiss Key were put on the FSA warning list.

In both cases you are likely to end up with over-valued shares which will drop in the short term back to a natural level. But there is always a chance they might do well provided they don't go under. Note though the scams are always on small companies because a boiler house operation could never influence the share price of a highly capitalised company like Microsoft, BP etc. So the chances of the company going under are higher.

bendix

Good god. I find it utterly amazing that people are gullible enough to part with hard-earned cash from cold phone calls offering great opportunities?

No people have no critical faculties at all?

utu

Hi
It wasn't cold calling, I think you'll find we all made some enquiry through something like (on my part anyway) 'Trade Alert' which was advertising early info on penny shares. Dumb? oh yes.
Ain't nothing sadder than an old optimist. Or a young pessimist. I forgot I was old for a minute, that's all.

CharasmaticK

Hi All,

Just a quick message to all i've had numerous calls over the last few days from a company now called IAZ and Partners. These are scammers, as they couldn't give me exact answers to my questions and sounded very suspicious. Please be aware of them and in Particular Antony King!!!

Cheers,
K

charliefunkuk

I purchased just under £2000 worth of TLAG shares on recommendation of a swiss company called Alpha Invest AG (Based near Zurich). They have a website too, but this BB wont let me post it. I paid $0.08 per share for them.

I paid TLAG (Total Apparel Group) direct to there bank account for those shares by bank transfer after first calling TLAG and Bank of America to check a) the company was Legit and b) the bank account was legit for that company.

So far all seems above board, but having read this I am pleased I only have £2k stuck in there at mo. With USA through to world cup and TLAG opening the first FIFA merchandise store in New York, on the surface it seems a good investment.

I guess time will tell.

I always have and still do remain suspicious of Alpha Invest, but no money went through them at all.

Who knows what this stock will do, im sure time will tell.

hansi

I still can't believe people are still investing money this way. Still you have only lost 2k:eek::eek::eek::eek: That's a lot of money, well it is to me !

Reaper

The reason these scams operate it there seem to be an unlimited number of suckers.

Despite the web site copyright saying 2003 the web site was only registered in August 2009, so it's probably Swiss Key relaunching under a different name.

The layout is typical with a small number of waffly pages about different services offered but when it comes down to it they will just be pushing 1 or 2 stocks.

Expect the company to vanish in about 8 months.

Why on earth to people buy stocks after being cold called by foreign companies?

charliefunkuk

but the point is, no money was given to them whatsoever. The shares were purchased direct with TLAG and thats been confirmed with an email to them. Sure I have no idea where the share price will go, but it seems I do in fact hold £2k worth of genuine shares with Total Apparel Group. I guess now its just a case of sitting tight and seeing what happens to the share price.

Reaper

Yes, you do at least have real shares, in fact with boiler room operations that is normally the case. As I said in an earlier post there tend to be 2 objectives to the scam:

1) The scammers bought shares in the company before hand and are now trying to artificially inflate the price so they can sell and make a profit.
or
2) The target company itself needs to raise capital and has paid boiler room operations to promote it.

Either way you end up with over-priced shares. You will just have to hope in the long term it performs well enough to justify the price and more.

hansi

charliefunkuk wrote: »

but the point is, no money was given to them whatsoever. The shares were purchased direct with TLAG and thats been confirmed with an email to them. Sure I have no idea where the share price will go, but it seems I do in fact hold £2k worth of genuine shares with Total Apparel Group. I guess now its just a case of sitting tight and seeing what happens to the share price.

Yes, and losing all your money. Why don't people ever learn???? This is a SCAM!