Consumer complaint received 2023-01-04
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — International money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: Foris DAX, Inc. (SC)

Around XX/XX/2022 and on two separate occasions, I ( made significant financial transfers from my XXXX XXXX bank account using Crypto.com as the intermediary foreign exchange to accounts in my name listed within the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. The XXXX web site at the time claimed that XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX was a trading platform for the purpose of buying and selling currencies. Within this platform, I initially held a trading account with the XXXX XXXX XXXX - XXXX. In Late XXXX ( about XX/XX/XXXX ), that account was transferred to a new account with XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  Conducting XXXX  trading activities in both these accounts, I amassed some profits according to the information that they provided me but when I attempted to withdraw my large initial investment from the XXXX XXXX account, I ran into delays and bogus tax requirements that prevented me from withdrawing not only my " profits '' ( if they were ever real ) but also my initial investment. In short, I never received the services that XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ( hereafter XXXX ) offered on their web page and learned, after some internet research, concluded that I was the victim of a totally fraudulent investment scheme. When I challenged the actions of XXXX XXXX XXXX regarding the bogus tax requirement that they levied before they would release my funds, I received no help. This caused me to conclude that I was the victim of a scam and that the profits I thought I had amassed were not real but rather, fabrications designed to get me and other like me to invest money in these XXXX based entities. I realized at that point that going. after the XXXX firms for redress was unlikely to yield further success, so I turned my attention to Crypto.com, the exchange agent that sent my funds to the XXXX XXXX XXXX account. As a dealer in international currencies, I felt that Crypto.com had a fiduciary responsibility to ensure, to the best of their ability, that funds were being transferred to legitimate entities in order to protect their customer 's interests ( there were fees associated with the crypto.com service ). I wrote a letter to Crypto.com that laid all this out and requested redress from crypto.com for failure to. protect my funds by ensuring that they went to a legitimate entity. In an email response, they denied all responsibility. 

Throughout this saga, my dealings with the XXXX agent who was offering me instruction and investing advice, I had no idea that I was potentially dealing with a fraudulent scheme until late XXXX. The agent instructing me in how to invest in currency using the XXXX XXXX XXXX and ( later ) XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX used my lack of knowledge and the processing of my payments through Crypto.com to create an air of overall legitimacy that, of course, proved not to be true. This was the first time I had any dealings with Crypto.com and cryptocurrency in general. I was manipulated and deceived for over a month, and I am confident that if I had suspected the scam during this time, I would have stopped the transactions. However, I was receiving constant lies and cleverly fabricated documentation from the scammers. I was told that Crypto.com as a currency exchange was a temporary payment processor, which after some research I believed because Crypto.com does provide payment services. However, I was saddened to learn ( after the fact ) that Crypto.com didnt perform any security checks to validate the legitimacy of entities to which their clients were sending funds. As a major player in the XXXX XXXX XXXX, Crypto.com either knew or should have known of fraudulent investing schemes such as this and had a responsibility to warn consumers of the general dangers involved or and the specific dangers in dealing with firms such as XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX XXXX. Instead, they simply took their frees and passed my funds along.