Scam offers from 'New Scientist'

Rudyson

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Their reply said something about the advertising emails being "served up" by Google, so presumably I received this "offer" because of the searches that Google have recorded for me.

That might explain why I haven't had anything like it: I use private browsing and don't accept 3rd party cookies.

Malthusian

verybigchris wrote: »

Not necessarily a scam.

Promising "21%pa fixed returns" "regardless of Brexit and other economic conditions" from betting arbitrage is most definitely a scam.

It is not possible to generate consistent 21%pa returns from betting arbitrage. That means any return punters get (if they get any) will in reality be paid from their own investment or that of others'. That makes it a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes are scams.

If you had a magic algorithm which generated 21% per year returns you would not advertise it to random punters via New Scientist.

AnotherJoe

I had something similar from them (eg equally scammy) for "investing" in some sort of bio fuel with "guaranteed" returns. Was going to write them a ranty email but couldnt be bothered In the end, at some point people have to take responsibility for their own idiocy in applying for these type of deals.

AnotherJoe

Malthusian wrote: »

If you had a magic algorithm which generated 21% per year returns you would not advertise it to random punters via New Scientist.

Exactly. But plenty of suckers who can't see that simple truth. Unless of course you count the 21% guaranteed return as what you get from the suckers after deducting the cost of your NS ad.

Reaper

The Bond Review site has just covered Global Edge (a trading name of UK Innovative TI Ltd) who are the ones offering this in a well researched article...

https://bondreview.co.uk/2020/01/02/we-review-global-edges-bonds-paying-up-to-21-per-year/

dividendhero

verybigchris wrote: »

Not necessarily a scam. Arbitraging bookmaker odds is a real thing: essentially you can get situations where you place opposing bets with two different bookies and you are guaranteed a positive return, irrespective of the outcome of the event you're betting on. I did it for a while (didn't use a service like that, just wrote a Python script for my Raspberry Pi that scraped Oddschecker for me every hour) but the bookies got on to it and limited my accounts. I can see how investing in a service that manages these bets could be a legitimate investment (but don't take that as a recommendation).

There's a matched betting subforum on here somewhere that goes into more detail on it. Returns are great if you take up all the "Free Bet" offers, but once they've dried up the returns plummet.

How did they sus you out? or was it simply the case that they closed your account as it was positive?

verybigchris

dividendhero wrote: »

How did they sus you out? or was it simply the case that they closed your account as it was positive?

I didn't really do anything to hide what I was doing, and I guess betting £24.71 on Estonian reserve team football probably flags something on their computer systems. A few friends kept it going for a little longer before being "gubbed" by camouflaging what they were doing, placing some more normal looking bets amongst the profitable ones, but obviously that eats into their returns and nobody really knows how their detection algorithms work anyway. I did suspect that occasionally they put out deliberately good odds on obscure events to try and catch the arbitragers.

Malthusian

Verybigchris' example simply illustrates that it is not possible to consistently and scalably generate returns of 21% per year with betting arbitrage, especially with up to £10 million of other people's money. He was running into problems with betting £25 of his own money.

In any case Global Edge aren't claiming to generate returns via betting arbitrage, they're claiming they have magic algorithms that can beat the bookies. It is not possible to consistently generate returns of 21% per year by gambling with magic algorithms either.

This means that in reality Global Edge is paying investors' returns with their own money or those of new investors. This makes it a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes are scams.