The OGC Wallet and XHO Investment Group scam was brought to my attention by someone who was actively engaged with it but had become concerned when they were asked for money to withdraw their alleged profits.
This in itself is a huge red flag and behaviour typical of scammers who are trying to squeeze every last drop of cash out of a victim.
Luckily, the victim contacted me before parting with any further cash and they have rightly decided not to do so.
The OGC/XHO scam purports to be a form of binary options betting involving some of the major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.
Participants are first asked to deposit funds into a wallet run by the scammers before they are given ‘trading signals’ to follow via the OGC Wallet app.
These ‘signals’ consist of extremely short term positions to take (such as 60 seconds) on a buy or sell option. The scammers also give a suggested investment amount, such as $10,000. Successful ‘positions’ attract ‘returns’ in excess of 80%.
One of the ringleaders regular posts is own trading positions into a Telegram group. These vary from between $10,000-$20,000 and, of course, were mostly wins.
It’s all nonsense of course and these trades and returns don’t actually exist for either the participant or scammer.
If you were able to get an 80% return rate multiple times a day with only a few losses why would you need to share this with anyone or get anyone else to invest? You’d be a multi-millionaire in no time at all on your own.
‘Commission’ demand is all part of the scam
OGC participants are simply being led along by the scammers to make them believe they are making huge profits in a short space of time – a classic lure.
When a client decides they want to cash out their newly won riches, the ‘analyst’ demands commission of 20% to do so.
This means that not only have the scammers fleeced unsuspecting participants out of their initial ‘investment’ amount, they’re now trying to get another 20% of the imaginary profits.
The person who contacted me said they’d been speaking to people in a ‘VIP investment forum’ connected to the scam.
The chat was “all upbeat” and he had been shown apparent evidence of funds that had been paid by OGC Wallet to ‘investors’.
I was shown screenshots of the chat, together with exchanges between the participant and the so-called boss of the company, who had apparently revealed that he lived in a swanky apartment in, of all places, Wall Street, New York in the United States.
Having studied the chat, much of it looked like bot activity. Other messages appeared deliberately designed to suck people into a scam.
The conversation between the boss and the participant verged on the hard sell as he tried to get him to hand over more funds for ‘commission’.
Also, he used the word ‘sir’ in a part of a sentence where it would not be commonly used by a native English speaker suggesting he wasn’t the All American ‘Joey’ he claimed to be.
How can I tell OGC Wallet is a scam?
Here are a few things that reveal OGC Wallet to be an obvious scam:
- There is virtually no information about OGC Wallet or XHO investment group online, and what exists appear to be a cooker cutter websites set up purely to promote the scam.
- There are a handful of genuine reviews on various websites warning that OGC is a scam.
- The OGC domain name is only a few months old and has only been registered for a year – unusual for a legitimate financial institution.
- The website content is poorly written, the images of customers are clearly model pictures scraped from the internet and the links in the footer simply redirect to the homepage.
- The mobile app links are direct downloads rather than links to the genuine Android and Apple web stores.
- The profits are unrealistically high and completely impossible to achieve every 60 seconds.
- Scraped model shots are also used for the ‘team’ members but the scammers have been lazy. The same image appears for both the CEO & Founder and a user called ‘Amanda_Evil’, even though the person portrayed in the image is male.
- Contact email addresses are different throughout the site and even include default names such as ‘example@…’ where they haven’t been changed from the website template.
- Different pages claim the company is located in various parts of the world, from New York to Australia.
- The promotional video available on the website is a templated production with a poor text-to-speech computer generated voice over.
- The whitepaper, also available on the website, looks like it was scraped from somewhere else and mainly talks about a game platform based on the TRON blockchain-based operating system. It bears no relevance to the purported business of the OGC Wallet platform. Clearly the scammers couldn’t be bothered to change it.
Is OGC Wallet a scam?
Yes, OGC Wallet and XHO Investment Group are 100% scam sites.
You should not engage with these websites, send them any money or respond to any approaches from people representing them.
Block emails and phone numbers and do not be tempted by the apparent huge returns on offer – they don’t exist.
OGC Wallet scam victims come forward
Since posting this scam report I’ve had several people contact me to recount their own engagement with OGC Wallet and how they were finding it impossible to get their money back.
Here are some of the messages I’ve been receiving:
"I have invested around $5000 in OGC. I came in touch with them by telegram message. They guided me to earn money and I reached to $23000. They charged me 30% commission than 15% tax and are now asking $1000 to clear funds from their financial department. I borrowed all the money and due to this I have a debt of around $10000. How can I get my money back?" "I am the victim of OGC Wallet. I was engaged with an agent in Mumbai who scammed me and got me to deposit funds into the wallet. When I tried to withdraw she asked me to transfer the security deposit of $1,000 into another wallet. Thereafter I have received an email asking me to pay a 'tax' of 20% of my total profit, together with a 2% 'service fee' as soon as possible, otherwise I'll lose my funds. I now know this is a fraud and scam." "Unfortunately only today I found out about your site and I'm sorry since I've lost $7,500. I fell into the network via telegram then they froze my account with the amount of $50,000. To unlock it, they asked me for $5,000." "I invested in OGC Wallet and earned some profit. I asked them for withdrawal. They asked me for commission of 20%. I agreed to give the amount, but after that they ask for a transaction fee. I refuse to give that amount. They say without giving the amount they cannot release the payment. At last I have given that amount too. 2 - 3 days go by and no msg from them and no one in online. On the 4th day I saw my contact online and asked for a withdrawal. She says that my account is frozen and I need to pay to unfreeze it. I told them I will not pay." "This site is fake it didn't give me my money. How can I withdraw the money deposited there?" "In OGC Wallet my account is showing as an abnormal account and all access has been frozen."
These messages are representative of others who have been in touch after encountering OGC Wallet and only serves to reinforce the message that this crypto platform is a complete scam.
How can I avoid crypto scams?
As you can see from what I’ve written above, there are many different indicators that reveal the OGC Wallet and app to be a scam.
It’s crucial that you thoroughly research any company you engage with, especially if you’re planning to part with your hard-earned cash.
The cryptosphere is still largely unregulated meaning there’s plenty of scope for scammers to act without any recourse from authorities such as the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK.
You can use some of the info in this post as a checklist when considering an investment, whether it’s crypto or otherwise.
The common mistakes that give scam websites away make them quite easy to spot when you know what you’re looking for, whether it’s in the crypto space or elsewhere.
If you’re concerned about a financial website you suspect to be fraudulent and live in the UK you can contact Action Fraud to report it.
You can also contact me and I’ll be happy to look into it.