Pareto SG – What Singaporeans Need To Know
On 17 February 2020, the director of Pareto International and the director of Pareto SG had a late “Valentine’s Day date” with the Commercial Affairs Department.
In this article, we will take on the lense of someone going through this Pareto SG investment/trading journey to put together a better picture of what happened.
We managed to get our hands on:
- Valuable insights and sharing of experience from Singaporeans who have crossed path with the company.
- Their sales presentation slides
Disclaimer: As this investigation is still on-going, we will not jump to any conclusion. This article is mainly for education purpose.
Months leading up to this, a question on our Community Platform caught our attention.
It wasn’t until another post on our Facebook Group that we start taking a closer look at Pareto SG Pte Ltd.
A Recollection of What Went Down by an Investor With Pareto SG
One of the investors of Pareto shared with us his story, which we will summarise for you.
Disclaimer: The below story is the point of view of a community member on our platform. It does not represent Seedly’s opinion.
You can find his full story on our Seedly Community Platform. Here goes:
The story goes way back to Fortis Moneta Holdings Pte Ltd.
Fortis Moneta
He was previously invested in Fortis Moneta. They heard of some problem at Fortis Moneta, and thought of withdrawing his investments with the rest of the investors.
Fortis Moneta then, conducted a meeting, even flew their biggest shareholder from Hong Kong down to reassure that the problems they heard of are not true.
The team at Fortis Moneta reassured their investors that the Copy Trading result is doing well and there is no need for the unnecessary early withdrawal of their investments.
Some Investors of Fortis Moneta Still Want Their Money Back
When some of the investors of Fortis Moneta still insist on withdrawing their money, their accounts start indicating that they made a huge loss overnight.
One of those accounts even made a loss of US$20,000 overnight.
Anxious, they went down to the office the next day to find out what’s up. They were reassured by the Master Trader that it was a software error and that their capital is still safe.
The only problem is that they WILL NOT BE ABLE TO WITHDRAW that money for the time being.
Now Everybody Want Their Money Back
When the rest of the investors of Fortis Moneta heard of the incident, they requested for a full withdrawal through the platform.
As expected, nothing happened. No money, nothing.
Hiding behind the reason of a technical problem, Fortis Moneta assures the investors that the money will be transferred to them.
After weeks of calling and waiting, some of the investors made their way down to the office only to realise that the office was cleared out.
“We Managed To Get The Management Out To Meet Us”
The investors eventually managed to get the management to meet them to get an answer for such behaviour. The management team told them that someone embezzled all the money.
Investors are now asked to give them some time to raise funds to repay their money back.
This is provided the investors do not go to the police.
How Fortis Moneta Ties back To Pareto SG?
The team managing Fortis Moneta went on to set up Pareto SG. The Master Trader of Fortis Moneta leads the team at Pareto SG. The shareholder of Fortis Moneta possibly funded Pareto SG.
The Pareto SG Story
This investor saw certain similarities used at Fortis Moneta, being used at Pareto SG.
- Getting Singaporeans to attend preview or lesson
- Lesson or preview was done on their very own trading platform, controlled by them.
- An offshore company to handle your funds
In this case, Pareto SG directs you to an overseas broker called VGX trade. After researching on VGX trade, a lot of forex broker platforms carries quite a negative review of VGX trade.
Upon creating an account with VGX, the funding option was a bank transfer to a Hong Kong bank account under the account name “Pareto International Holding”.
There is also a detailed article about VGX trade on Valforex, calling them brutal forex scam.
What Is Pareto SG Selling?
Again, big thanks to the Seedly Personal Finance Community, we managed to get a copy of the Pareto SG pitch deck. Here are some of the slides in the deck.
The product is an investment product that compounds monthly. The example above states how a $5,000 initial investment can end up with a projected balance of $8,979 after 12 months. A profit of $3,979.
Learnings from this Pareto SG Case
Before we jump to any conclusion, it is important to note that Pareto SG at the moment is not guilty of anything.
The fact that they are undergoing investigation right now for investment scheme breaches indicates that this is actually a high-risk investment whether proven guilty or not. We are assuming that some of the investors do not know that this is actually a high-risk investment.
Here are some quick tips and learnings from this case:
- Unrealistically high returns
While there might be product out there that gives super high returns, do note that it usually comes with high risk. - When in doubt, always check if they are licensed by MAS
You can find a comprehensive list on the MAS website. - Pay closer attention to the history of the management team
How is their track record over the years? What was their previous role in which company? - When in doubt, get more opinion from the general public
There is technically no harm is asking more about the company on a forum, Facebook Group or a more specialised platform such as Seedly Community. Tap on the knowledge of the community before making a decision.
Is Copy Trading A Scam?
Most people would have jumped on the idea of copy trading and associating it too close to this case. There are MAS licensed copy trading platforms in Singapore. If you are still keen on copy trading, you may check out these platforms.
Do note that trading is generally a high-risk investment.
