Oh wise ones,

One guy in his late 30's in a group of friends got in touch with us wanting to share an "exciting investment opportunity" that he had researched extensively and is looking to move his retirement savings into. He is generally a smart enough guy, with a graduate degree and gainful employment. My spidey sense immediately started tingling, and he was aware of how "scammy" this sounds, but had convinced himself it is legit. I'm not a financial genius by any means, but I'm relaying as much of the information as I could gather during an "investor call" that I listened in on.

The organization is Oasis Management Group (US-based financial management company) and Oasis International Group (off-shore firm in the Cayman Islands that performs equity trading and guarantees an annual 12% rate of return on invested monies).

You essentially sign up with Oasis Management Group and give them minimum $10k. They then in turn transfer this money to the offshore OIG where you are given a "note".

They claim that their system has no inherent risk (other than a systemic failure of the banking industry that holds their capital) because they simply use their liquidity to perform a ton of trades using "bid/ask spreads" to facilitate transactions in the major currencies. The transfers execute in seconds, so they are never holding a position in the currencies, thus the lack of risk.

They "capture the spread" on these trades, and do a lot of volume, turning over their money perhaps 15 or 30 times a day, taking a tiny fraction on each trade.

They claim to have made $58b in trades last year, and already $33b in trades YTD as they are growing their volume by leaps and bounds.

Last year was the first year using this "model", and they allegedly returned around 21%.

They claim a "guaranteed" return with no risk because they will allegedly give up to 75% of the "bid/ask spread" on their trades to make up the 1% monthly if necessary.

They are happy to help people roll their 401k/IRAs into self-directed IRAs to get into the game.

My favorite quote from the call was, "We aren't geniuses that can make 15% on our money by holding positions in the market. We're just making tiny fractions on trades and grinding 24/7."

It wasn't mentioned on the call, but it definitely sounded like there was also some kind of referral type system where you can get a taste of your downstream action. Unconfirmed though.

So obviously, I'm worried about my friend and don't want him to get scammed out of his retirement savings. I googled around on these guys and surprisingly didn't get what I assumed would be immediate hits, but I'm guessing its because this is a small potatoes operation. Will probably not go too far trying to convince him it is a scam, since that can't possibly work out well, but will just get sad that he's most likely being conned.

sounds like scam to me.

did some sleuthing and found the guys running the show in the Caymans

I stopped reading right there. It's a scam. No legit investment has ever been pitched with the phrase "exciting investment opportunity".

I only read the title but it's a scam

lol I heart 2p2 so much sometimes

Stopped reading there, 100% scam.

Has this ever ended well, in the history of mankind?
Neither mean you're savvy enough to avoid getting caught up in this. Llots of people who fit into the above who've been scammed. In fact good scammers know how to prey on people with a little academic know how and job success but not much of a worldly mind. They're the best targets - somewhat trusting, not particularly street smart because they've lived a higher end life, sure of themselves because of their modicum of success, unlikely to listen to friends and family, and have substantial holdings usually and enough of an income that they don't need to withdraw their money for decades. The latter is solid gold when you're running a ponzi, which is one reason that ponzis target retirement holdings - people don't withdraw them for years. So yeah, your friend is exactly the kind that fraudsters love to go after.
There are all manner of reasons for people to get $$$$ and guarantee this rate of return. The most common is that it's a ponzi. The second most common is that they use your money to invest in much higher return (like equities in a bull market which return 30%/year), and pocket the difference. Third most common is to invest in speculative "investments" like crypto. This way they gain years of payouts while making crazy bank for themselves, and the payouts act as a word of mouth for idiots who claim "they send me a check everything month like clockwork!", getting other idiots to sign up. Like Madoff, it all works fine while the market is going up and no one withdraws their money. When that happens, however:
The above means that no one gets their money back or has any recourse really.
My main investment strategy is to transfer money to untraceable countries, and receive a "note" in return.
Sounds like exactly what I'd tell a naive person if I wanted to get his money.

But they really need your friend's $10,000
So they have no history of success, and under performed the market by 50% using this strategy? This sounds like a horrible investment even if it's legitimate.

I bet they are. 401ks and IRAs are exactly what you want if you want to scam people. It'll be decades before the money is withdrawn in most cases, which means they just have to send you a fictional account statement and 12%/year while the market goes up, and have little risk of you needing the money and withdrawing before the scam goes belly up and they run off with your funds.

Ponzis are usually set up that way.

Partly small potatoes and partly because when the market or other risk investments like crypto are going up at a good clip, they're returning the "guaranteed" and pocketing the large difference for themselves. So who is going to complain? They usually keep running the scam to keep getting fresh capital flowing in until the market turns and then run off with the money. That's when the complaints start happening, but by then it's too late.

If this guy can do it in America under the nose of the SEC for decades, you think aspirational-sounding "Oasis Investment Group" can't do it in the Caymans?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal

I assume you're going to show him this thread. Or perhaps you should just let him invest. There is not much fun, but probably a lot of wisdom, in losing everything to scammers and becoming a destitute hobo in your old age. Who are you to say his life shouldn't take this path? Maybe it'll be good for his soul.

I'm not too familiar with the history of these sorts of companies, but didn't a lot of successful hedge funds take public investments in the beginning? But haven't hedge funds performed really poorly in the aggregate?

Anyway, sounds like a scam. Reminds me of a buddy of mine who got called by a college friend (Harvard lol) who pitched him a "white hot" investment. Turns out the ROI would have been -100%. Shocked us all.

No legitimate hedge fund guarantees a rate of return. And yeah - hedge funds under perform the market horribly.

Scam.
Analyzing any further is similar to the MLM guy asking you to understand details of his newest super complicated pyramid payout structure before making judgement about the opportunity. It's just moves focus into details you won't be able understand of without committing tons of time to research (and likely even then).

"One guy in his late 30's in a group of friends got in touch with us..."





"So obviously, I'm worried about my friend and don't want him to get scammed out of his retirement savings. I googled around on these guys and surprisingly didn't get what I assumed would be immediate hits, but I'm guessing its because this is a small potatoes operation. Will probably not go too far trying to convince him it is a scam, since that can't possibly work out well, but will just get sad that he's most likely being conned."



2p2 to the rescue!

All guaranteed returns are usually scams unless they fall in line with other guaranteed rates of return, like high quality bonds. This does not do that, it is most likely a ponzi scheme.

Also, Cayman Islands makes it so he doesn't have recourse. If they could generate a ton of money they wouldn't want outside money. $58 billion in total trades doesn't mean much, if they generated $58 billion in profit then that would be ridiculous. Eg. If I bought a 100 shares of a $100 stock at the $100.01 ask and then immediately sold the shares each time at the $100.00 bid and repeated this 100 times I will have made $2 million worth of trades and lost $100 plus fees.

Maybe a HYIP, get in early to make the profitzzz.

Everything is a scam.

/BFI

BITCONNNNNNECCTTTT

Sent from my SM-C900F using Tapatalk

The claim is that they act as a middle-man for currency trades, with the given example of someone wanting to sell a bunch of Euros for 142.00 and someone wanting to buy a bunch of Euros for 142.20, so they buy them and immediately turn around and electronically sell them a second later and pocket the spread.

They claim that they can do this because they have a "license" to make these trades, and have demonstrated sufficient liquidity with the banks to be allowed to do so. The sub-text being that they don't have any secret sauce other than whatever "license" is needed and enough cash in the bank to buy the currency on paper and flip it without actually having to hold the position.

Obviously since they aren't audited/regulated they could literally be doing anything with the money (i.e. bitcoinz for days), but I don't know anything about currency trading to know if there is inherent bull**** in the way they claim to be doing business.

I certainly won't be participating in this exciting opportunity, nor will I go hard trying to convince my friend to run, as he's already made up his mind and I don't really want to engage in a debate on how this is the deal of a lifetime. Was sort of curious if anyone was familiar with this particular outfit or if it was a clone of any other well-known scams that could be easily cited.

Bonus shady bits of the "investor call" for funsies:

1. "Because we are growing so rapidly, we really need to pump the brakes and make sure we get our back office in order so we can continue providing the level of service that our customers deserve. So, after February 1, we won't be allowing any additional investors in until at least April, so let us know soon if you want in!"

2. Moderator - "Thanks <traderguy> for all of that great information. We'll now open this up to questions, but we don't want to open up the audio and get a bunch of background noise on the call, so go ahead and text any questions to me at xxx-xxx-xxxx and I'll relay them to <traderguy> for you. *0 seconds pass* Ok, our first question is "Wow, you are really killing it this month! Why are we making so much money this month, and do you think it'll continue into the future?"

3. Q: Are you audited?
A: No, we aren't. Because we've only been using this approach for a year, we're waiting until we have more data available before we spend a ton of money on audits.

There isn't this kind of free money in the multi trillion $/day FX market. It just doesn't exist. Banks aren't passing off their global forex trading to some company in the Caymans who's doing conference calls with nobodies to get $10K. The world doesn't work like that.

Also, it shouldn't be hard to talk your friend out of "the investment of a lifetime" giving that they're only offering 12%/year and the market is returning far more.

I would snap unfriend someone for falling for this.

If a Nigerian prince hasn't died in the story, I would say it's most likely legit. Maybe only start with half your retirement saving just to be safe.

The best case is that they're borrowing from you at 12% interest to make high risk investments and pocketing the difference, freerolling the investor, but not necessarily stealing outright. If that's the case, if the market goes up or they're otherwise lucky with their investments, the investor will get 12% over some time period. But they're doomed to fall short of the 12% sooner or later and will probably take on more and more risk until they either go bust or get back their "guaranteed" returns. If they do this intelligently and get lucky they might be able to keep it going for quite some time, maybe decades even.

But as others have said, it's far more likely to be some sort of ponzi or otherwise straight up scam. In any case, it's a terrible idea.

If someone makes an transparent/ironic ponzi and keeps it running, will the feds come after them?

See: PonziCoin, which was done transparently as a joke. People actually started putting money in it, which surprised the creator who shut it down after a day or two.

Most likely scam, but trading like was described itt is possible, one university matematician founded years back trading company doing exactly that:
http://www.automatedtrader.net/aw/671/rsj
He is billionaire today.

As soon as I read guarantees at 12% ROI I KNEW it was a scam.

guarantees at *any* ROI