PFD, Reverse Leveraging or Sports arbitrage. Big money, no risk - Guaranteed
How does sport arbitrage betting/ trading work? Well I could write a novel about how it works however this demo explains it really easily for you.
Here is my story about a company called TradeSmart Technologies Limited. (Go have a look at their website). It doesn’t work anymore so I feel somewhat relieved that I didn’t invest with them- however many people did. :-(
It all started back in early Feb 2008 when I got a call from an Australian using a blocked number. He told me they were based in Melbourne – and asked me if I could make guaranteed returns of 3% on every trade would I be interested? “Sure” was my reply – so they sent me the details via post.
A week or so later a slick document arrived via post telling me of all the benefits of PFD (profit from difference) Trading. I had a quick read and it really told me nothing – but I would find out over the course of the next month how the system works. A system that will make you part with a large amount of money!
And so it begins.
A nice Scottish girl rings me, asking me about the product and if I would like a demo – “Sure” I said ‘that sounds fine’, demo away. I installed a crappy dot net application. This application was poor – a first year programmer could have built a better looking application.
Great! I had a 30 second demo to prove it works, did it work? The demo looked like it worked but the demo was assisted over the phone, I didn’t really get to try it out and ‘sorry’ only one demo for me. Would you buy an 8,000 dollar car after a 30 second drive down the road?
So we move onto the hard sell.
“Ok Richard we only have a limited number of packages, 150 allocated to New Zealand” – Why is that I asked? “Because we don’t want to oversubscribe the product”. (Is that possible – this isn’t the stock market?)
Luckily I have a habit of always writing notes about my conversations. In my notes I noted down all facts and figures. She told me they only had 85 products left from the initial 150 that had been allocated and they were selling like hotcakes, with15 products sold that morning, so I better be quick! She said I could choose between 2 different packages the basic, or the more advanced package. The basic was around $8,000 AUD dollars, don’t ask how much the more advanced package was!
I asked her for a 30 day trial of the product so that I could see for myself if it worked.
She got angry and suggested to me that if she did this I could profit from the product and use that profit to pay for the product after 30 days! (To this day I can’t work out her logic in that argument, but that was it) I said to her that was a great idea, and I might just do that ;-).
So she changed tack telling me that after 30 days there would be no way of turning the product off once it was turned on. Yeah right! The product connects to their servers to get the live feeds. If this was true, that they couldn’t disable it; then this product really was written by a first year programming student.
In my conversation with her she informed me that this was an introductory product that would build up trust with their company so when the bigger opportunities came along I could invest in them. This was a plot straight out of Boiler Room!!!!
Our conversation ended shortly afterwards as I had managed to stump her on every argument and she basically hung up.
But it did not end there.
I was bumped up to a better high pressure sales person. Boy this guy was good. This guy could sell ice to an Eskimo! He rang me the following week and he apologized about the other sales rep- playing good cop I guess.
I began by asking how many products they had left in New Zealand? He informed me they had plenty of packages left. I asked him for an exact number and he said 452 products!
“So are you going to invest Richard?” – No I answered; please take me off your call list – Good bye.
Back then Tradesmart had no bad press that I could find about them on Google. The only sites I could find were sites that actually supported their product; however I was to find out later, those supportive sites were owned by them! I was part of the first wave of potential victims for this crew. Search them now and the first few searches are scamwatch results!
So why write this blog? Because I am now getting hammered by a new company selling the same stuff. The guy had the cheek to ask me if I had 10K of cash sitting in my bank account because he didn’t want to waste his time - dear god!
Hopefully they will stumble across my blog before they bother to ring me again ;-)
Is sports arbitrage a scam? No its not a scam, but the guys selling it usually are. It is in theory possible to bet on both side of a sports team, with different bookies (different odds) and make money – but the returns are small, the volumes have to be high and the trades have to be many before you can make any money. Also it’s highly likely that if one Bookie gets the odds wrong they will cancel the bet leaving you with one live bet and one cancelled bet!
With Tradesmart you have to spend real money with these guys to have the opportunity to make a little bit of money, and in most cases the profits are overstated and the risks understated. Also once you pay your money you are at the mercy of these guys. When they close up and leave, you are on your own.
My advice is if you have 10k sitting in the bank and want to invest it, then buy gold ;-)
On a side note:
I was at a party last year and got chatting to someone who was telling me he had invested in a product that guaranteed returns but wouldn’t tell me what it was (his little secret investment opportunity, I guess). I said “I hope it’s not Tradesmart!” ‘I managed to screw those bastards down to 6k before I told them I wasn’t interested.’
The blood drained from his face.
Sites compaining about TradeSmart
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/tradesmart-technologies-c66225.html
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/332/RipOff0332289.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/342/RipOff0342847.htm
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/tradesmart-technologies-c59553.html
Tag(s):
Other related posts:
The currency fight – update
New Zealand and the currency war
Tipping is for the birds.
Comment by timestyles, on 12-Jul-2009 12:54 , user id: 27337)
I hear that gold runs out in about 35 years. Might be a good idea, that.
Comment by Sam, on 8-Nov-2010 03:11 , user id: )
Re: Reverse Leveraging or Sports arbitrage. Big money, no risk - Guaranteed (Huh)
The Pitch... Marketing the Shell, Not Giving Us The Guts!...
"After years spent in thorough research and testing, AFS Global is finally able to develop the Margin locator program which is a state of the art and cutting-edge technology that is beneficial for investors and bettors alike"... Don't Believe The Hype (a very wise man once said).
AFS GLOBAL SYNC MARGINING: Beware when using this Sync Margining program... i have been using this Software, 'desperately' trying to recoup my initial investment... part of the problem with this model lies with the Bookmakers, as obviously they don't want you making money from them, especially without taking the punt right, so they now have their own protection systems in place to make this type of trading very difficult, to verging on impossible, so here's a brief overview, when a trade appears on the AFS Global Software, you immediately log into both Bookmakers, verifying that the Odds correspond with the Software(Margin Locator), and if it looks ok, then you proceed to deposit your funds into both, however, because so many people have this same Software the Bookmakers are made aware very quickly, and either shift the whole event (Sports) to offline until Software Traders stop hitting that particular event or restrict your Bet (Max Bet Limiting) to an amount that makes it near impossible to produce a positive margin, and so basically, this is one of the (many) reasons why it's becoming increasingly more difficult to make/find any potential Sporting event trades that actually result in a profit situation, the other "Big Prob", is the Margin Locator (Software), as it gathers Data Feeds from the various different Bookmakers(Globally), generating the highest Odds resulting in a profit percentage/margin, this is the theory anyway, although, because the software is technically flawed, you quite often get mixed Event feeds coming through, this is where you'll have for example, a Baseball Match, commonly coined as a '2 Way Trade', which requires 2 Bookmakers: (Side 1 - Side 2), so what i've found that frequently occurs with the Software is that it will get the dates of the events mixed up, so hypothetically, let's say the; Texas Rangers play the New York Yankees, and they'll be playing 2 games over 2 days - 5/6/09 + 6/6/09, now AFS Globals' Margin Locator software will show odds from the first day of play(5/6/09), and then somehow get the events totally mixed up fusing the different Odds that are produced from the following day of play (6/6/09) to make it look like a single event Trade, resulting in a possible large financial loss!
The other problem is, because AFS Global's Software is so slow to process Bookmakers Data Feeds, you end up with a stream of Trades showing (Margin Locator) up where the Odds don't correspond with the Bookmaker's Odds, like you have to "Log In" to verify (corresponding odds) approximately 10-40 Bookmakers at a time, also taking into account that because of the Max Bet restrictions (applied by Bookmakers), you may only be able to generate a trade that equates to a profit of only 2-4 Euro, crazy i know, takes hours of mucking around, verifying odds, all for only a few Euros profit, that's provided you do infact find one!
There's also another problem that i frequently encounter, and that's when the Software mixes the Markets up, this is where you get a Sports Trade, ie; Tennis, the Market is a Moneyline Bet, (which is the only Market that suits this type of software trading), so both Bookmaker's must show this same market in order for the trade to work, however the Margin Locator will produce one Bookmaker with Odds that correspond to the Moneyline, and the other Bookmaker (2 Way Trade) will show odds that correspond to a Set Betting Market or some other Market that the Software should NOT show... there's basically many situations like this, i could write book about it, maybe i should, because at the end of the day, it's probably the ONLY way i will be remunerated for this inferior, supposed investment.
To summarise, i've owned this software for 11 months now, made 150.00 Euro approx, but lost over 800.00+ Euro, so if you have a spare $10,000.00 spare, then your probably better off buying a lawn mowing round, as would be a hell of a lot less stress, and you might even get fit at the same time (LOL).
P.S. AFS Global DON'T give refunds, and the Support is horrific!.
Comment by crunchie, on 9-Nov-2011 23:55 , user id: )
LTC Services Investment - it sounds like a scam. Thanks for making me aware of these scam artists.
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Comment by sleemanj, on 8-Jul-2009 19:42 , user id: 27497)
Well, usual story, if it seems to good to be true....