by 
(first published April 21, 2020)
A lot has already been said about investment scam platforms. Now for a few minutes let’s shine a spotlight on another growing type of scam — Asset Recovery Scams.
And here’s what they do.
So you’ve just been scammed by one of those investment scams like the ones I mentioned here. You are distraught and confused — It’s like you are having an out-of-body experience. As reality begins to dawn on you, you mutter to yourself repeatedly in utter disbelief -Does this mean your hard earned money is gone just like that? Desperate for a solution, you run to everyone’s favorite internet helper. Yes, Daddy Google must have something for you. And so you hurriedly type — How to recover my lost funds. Your search results is populated and you begin to allow yourself some glimmer of hope — maybe all hope isn’t lost yet. You pick one of the websites you see in the results. Quickly you contact their chat support. Your racing heart is beginning to settle. Maybe there’s help after all.
A chat agent listens to your plight and assures you he can help. He tells you how the recovery platform has helped thousands of people in the exact same position you are right now. He says they want to get to helping you straightaway and will need $1000 to get started. In 1–2 weeks, he would recover your lost funds. It’s a lot of money to be sure, but you just don’t care at this point. Minutes ago you thought your money was gone beyond recovery now suddenly there’s hope. So what’s $1000 to the $8000 you just lost to a scam? Quickly you pay up the $1000 and you cross your fingers .Two weeks later, in eager anticipation for good news, you check back to see how much they’ve recovered but they wouldn’t respond and you don’t know why. Maybe they are busy- you’ll check back in a few days. You write them again through email but they don’t respond anymore. You used to communicate with one of their agents in telegram but now he has blocked you too.
What has just happened to you?
I’ll tell you. You have just experienced an asset recovery scam.
No you’re not stupid. These scum bags know you’ve consulted them because you’ve just been scammed. They know you’re in a vulnerable state. They know you’re not thinking straight. Armed with this information, they’ll tell you the sweet things you want to hear and before you know it you’ll throw money at them.
Indeed, Recovery scams are becoming more popular today fueled by the growing number of investment scams. Here’s a list of these asset recovery scams here
Now let’s look at one of such recovery scam platforms -refund-guide.com
Refund-guide.com Review
(Note: This review was first written on March 12, 2020. It’s awesome I caught them early because many of these scam sites later go ahead to restructure their websites to look legit. Refund-guide.com will most likely do the same but thankfully I already got the screenshots I needed for my review)
So here we go
The first thing that jumped out to me on the refund-guide website was the claims as to the number of users (782,000) they’ve helped recover funds. I tried clicking on the testimonial but it appeared to be a dead link. Obviously they are yet to update that part of the website and that’s a big red flag
If they are lying about their numbers, they might be lying about everything else.
So next I checked trust pilot review website which is one of the places refund-guide claims to have hundreds of thousands of testimonials.
The truth? It’s all lies. They have only one testimonial there , one they obviously wrote themselves which is very easy to do. To show more credibility like most scams do, they could easily have written 5–10 reviews by themselves but no, refund-guide.com is so lazy they could only come up with one review 😁 despite the lies posted on their site. My suspicion is they’ll write more reviews in the future but thankfully we caught them early before they had the chance.
Now to the meat of this report
When was refund-guide.com created?
For a company that claims to have helped over 700,000 people, let me surprise you by telling you refund-guide.com domain name was just registered on January 20, 2020.
That’s the biggest red flag as it’s one of the major tell tale signs of these recovery scam companies. Their life span is mostly a couple of months to one year or to anytime they cash out big from a ‘client’ and then they vanish.
What’s more
The refund-guide.com website is only registered for one year which is like the minimum mandatory duration to host a domain name. Scam companies go for the minimum for obvious reasons — they know they won’t be around for much longer so there’s no point paying for more than a year domain hosting.
If you feel like pressing this issue further, go ahead and ask them how feasible it is for a company that claims to have helped over 700 k people yet was just registered less than four months ago.
They might lie and say it’s not a new registration and that it only shows January as registration date because that was when they renewed their hosting/domain subscription.
All lies
Which is why I went a step further to check the history of the domain name. refund-guide.com certainly did not exist before January 2020 and there are no previous owners. There’s no Old Hoster as shown below
Finally
Let me break it to you — Mike Jones who is/was refund-guide’s primary agent as at when my report was being compiled (March 12) seems to be a fictitious character.
If he denies it, ask him for a social media link or a LinkedIn profile. Everyone has at least one even if you hate social media, even if you don’t frequently update it. Only scammers use the tired excuse of not having one because they want to stay off radar. Let him give you something to proof his identity.
If possible ask for a Skype or zoom video call and have it recorded for evidence. He’ll most likely decline a conversation. They prefer emails…lol
And don’t be surprised when they come up with more phony profiles in future.
After all these findings I can almost categorically say – No, refund-guide won’t get your money back
Sorry
But if you are stubborn about it and feel I’m wrong (I’m usually right), go right ahead and pay them.
Note
There are a few legit asset recovery companies out there. Bear in mind that just because a recovery platform is legit does not mean it gets all the funds back in every case. But at least they do their best and there are legal documents to back it up. Stay away from, companies that want to work completely off record. It is also wise to have the right expectations. Don’t expect the process to be quick. Many times it takes months to recover lost funds.
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