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An Abu Dhabi resident — who said she lost nearly $200,000 (Dh734,000) in bogus investments after she opened an account on a fake trading website five years ago — is still being chased by scammers.
The scammers, the woman said, called her recently and told her that her account was moved to another website and that she should reactivate it.
It all started in June 2019 when the woman came across a Facebook advertisement of an online trading website named ufx.com. The website no longer exists.
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“I wasn’t very busy at the time and decided to give it a shot, I sent my details to the website to open an account,” said the Jordanian IT manager.
On the same day, she received a call from an agent who asked her to send him copies of her ID, phone bill, and lease contract as proof of residence in the UAE.
“The number was from Bahrain, which seemed a bit suspicious at first. But the agent sounded professional and I was also receiving landline calls from their ‘documentation department’. Then I contacted their call centre a few times and the company seemed legitimate to me.”
After an exchange of documents and calls, her ‘account’ was approved, and she received a call from another agent. “He explained about UFX’s secure trading system and convinced me to deposit $50,000,” said the 45-year-old.
“In the beginning, there were a couple of successful deals worth $2,000 a day, which made me believe in UFX and online trading.”
The agent eventually convinced her to deposit another $50,000, which she lost because the "market dipped”.
After losing half of her capital, the woman decided to close her deals on UFX and withdraw the remaining cash from her account.
“The agent called me the next day and acted very upset over my application for cash withdrawal; he convinced me once again to keep my account and promised successful deals to compensate the losses.
“He was calling every day to open new deals that seemed successful at first.”
Two months later, while the woman was on a summer vacation in Syria, the agent called offering her “the deal of a lifetime” in the oil industry.
"Once again, the deal incurred losses, and he asked me to deposit more money in my so-called UFX account. He also pushed me to apply for a three-year-loan worth Dh300,000 that he said was needed to close the deals, retrieve profit and recover my losses fully."
However, the woman lost the entire money and was in "deep shock".
She then wrote several emails to 'UFX Support; after which, another agent started calling her and asking for more money to save the account.
This time she did not fall for it. “I was out of cash anyway, with the monthly loan payments taking away a third of my salary,” she said.
The woman said she got busy with work post-Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, which helped her maintain her sanity. “The overwhelming workload helped me focus on keeping my job and to stop thinking about my losses.”
Nevertheless, bogus agents continued to call the woman until recently, claiming that the UFX accounts were being transferred to another platform called Amana.
The woman said they also shared a username and password to re-activate her wallet, under a website titled Noor Capital, which she soon discovered was bogus.
“The bottom line is that scammers will stop at nothing, they will keep calling under new names and with updated persuasive skills,” she said.
Lt-Col Ali Al Nuaimi, head of cyber security at Abu Dhabi Police, said it is common for e-counterfeiters to send users from one website to another, as it would be too complicated to create an entirely fake website. "The same happened in the case of the Abu Dhabi woman."
He also said that scammers copy names and logos of popular corporates so that the public unwittingly trust them.
“They will show you that you are winning at first, to persuade you into sending them more and more money to invest. Online fraud will never stop, it will evolve following old and newly innovated measures,” Lt Col Ali Al Nuaimi warned.
Goran Jovanovic, a fitness trainer from Serbia, said he was tricked by imposters posing as Dubai Police personnel.
“I received a call with callers claiming to be from Dubai Police, they knew all my details, and said someone was trying to use my identity to flee the country,” said the 37-year-old.
“They said I would receive an OTP (one-time password) through SMS which I should provide them with to cancel the stolen ID card.”
Goran initially argued that if they were policemen, they should know the OTP themselves, but eventually they convinced him that he was the only recipient, and because they wanted to help him, they were willing to finish the procedure over the phone.
“I received the SMS from (what appeared to be) an official Dubai Police number, and I gave the OTP,” he said.
“Turns out the OTP was from the bank and they managed to steal Dh2,500 from my bank account.”
Lt-Col Ali Al Nuaimi said it was close to impossible for swindlers to hack or counterfeit comprehensive government applications like Abu Dhabi Police or UAE Pass. “I have not heard of such a case before.”
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