Ponzi trading app ‘MTFE’ collapses, tens of thousands set to lose everything
Business Report :
MTFE, an online Ponzi scheme disguised as an opportunity to trade in international financial markets, collapsed, leaving tens of thousands across the country penniless.
Issues began with a so-called system upgrade two weeks ago.
Users have been unable to withdraw any money since then, and on Thursday night, the virtual accounts of almost all users went negative.
The unregulated broker claimed to have incurred gigantic losses in the automated trading it pursued on behalf of clients.
“I am now certain that MTFE had been fabricating investment profits or losses,” said Moinul Islam, a defrauded MTFE user in Dhaka.
“In reality, its virtual trading environment fabricated everything to embezzle our money.”
He added that he regrets inviting some friends to the fraudulent platform, inadvertently contributing to the scheme’s spread.
MTFE was soliciting fresh injections of money from everyone to compensate for the losses.
Several users mentioned that unidentified agents were using intimidation tactics, threatening legal action if more funds weren’t provided.
How to flag and prevent a Ponzi scheme?
Concrete information on the number of people defrauded by the scheme in Bangladesh is unavailable.
However, several leaders of user teams estimated that the number could range from one lakh to half a million.
Some team leaders, who themselves lost substantial sums, estimated the scam’s scale to be around a thousand crore taka.
Nearly 400 people emerged as team leaders in Bangladesh, acting as agents in the scheme’s proliferation across the country.
The team leaders are themselves also users, who were given the role by the company.
A team leader on the condition of anonymity said, “The usage of the app spread rapidly in the past four-five months due to referrals.
With what’s happening now, it seems like we have been defrauded.”
The MFTE, which pretended to be registered in Canada, also extended its network to Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Pakistan, and India.
Users in those countries faced similar fates.
MTFE Trading app: the biggest scam right now
An app offering opportunities to trade crypto, forex, commodities, and even foreign stocks in its shadow platform, the MTFE recently spread like fire.
The platform pretending to earn and pay back from trading offers unbelievably easy money to users.
The offer was tantalising enough: spend $26 a day and earn half a dollar per day in return.
Keep the app open for half an hour a day to let the system run the supposed trade. For a winning trade, earns half a dollar and for losing, the penalty is equal.
The catch is one earns more than $2 as soon as someone new joins the platform with their reference – the textbook way of how a Ponzi scheme works.
The MTFE app available on the Google Play Store, which reached people even in upazilas, asks customers to practice trading in the simulation platform and own the profit or loss made.
Predictably, almost everyone opts for the other offer called the robotic trading service MTFE provides, which has been showing to be more profitable days than losing ones.
Several thousand people from Banaripara Upazila of Barishal have invested at least Tk50 crore in total in MTFE.
Investing in foreign assets is prohibited in Bangladesh and that is why MTFE users have to buy cryptocurrency from a gray market first and then pay the platform.
Again when they are paid back, the platform gives them crypto currency which the Bangladeshi MTFE users convert to dollars first and then into local currency.
People barely needed the reverse process as they only kept pouring more into the platform at any cost, said more than a dozen MTFE users who dream to grow big and become salaried team leaders of the cyber company that no one can reach if the app stops.
