5 Steps That May Keep You From Being Scammed in an HYIP Program

5 Steps That May Keep You From Being Scammed in an HYIP Program

hyip scam

Some of you know that in the high stakes HYIP (High Yield Investment Program) game, there are more scams than legitimate companies who are actually making good on their promises.

I know first hand as I was scammed out of over $5,000 between several HYIP companies.  One caught me totally off guard as it was paying just fine, from what I learned in a reputable forum that reports such things.  But then, after I invested, it stopped paying.  

My timing couldn’t have been more horrible!  But it wasn’t just my timing. I later learned that I could have avoided this completely!

This fiasco caused me to find out how to do better research – I sure paid enough to learn this lesson.  

In the same forum I mentioned above, I also ran across someone who gave me some very good tips on how to spot these fakers in addition to what I’d already just learned.

Dooh!  If I had only knew 1 simple thing he told me, I would not have even bothered to invest at all in that one HYIP that caught me off guard like that.

Here’s what I should have done but did not learn until I was scammed out of over $5000 first:

1. It Does NOT Matter What They Say On Their Website – HYIP sites, and other scams such as today’s cryptocurrency-MLM schemes, always list how all these people are being paid out, but it could all be a lie and so it is untrustworthy.  They will also point to company registration documents which can be easily faked. Don’t trust these either.  As a matter of fact, don’t trust anything on the website until proven otherwise! The scam programs will have nothing but lies on its website.  They never have any real products for sale and they don’t ever tell you who is running the show or where they are actually located.  Also, try to use some common sense.  If it looks like an 8 year old put their website together, its probably best not to send them any money either!

2. Check Forums and Review Sites – You can always check HYIP monitor forums for the up and up on any company but even these can be out of date. A company might pay for a little while but then stop, like what happened to me, and the forum folks won’t know about it yet until someone like me comes along and reports that I had been scammed by said company!  What you do is: go to the MMG website, https://www.moneymakergroup.com, then click their Search button, then enter the domain you are trying to look for and see what comes up in its search results.  Click on the result you are looking for, if any, and then read what other members are currently saying about it.  Also check TrustPilot, https://www.trustpilot.com, for any reviews on the HYIP.  These sites are only a good starting point but should not be relied upon for updated information.

3. Check HYIP Monitors – This is something that I did do before, but like in Step #2 above, they can be out of date and not have the correct info by the time you decide to invest.  Sites like allhyipmonitors.com is a good place to start just to check if a program is currently paying, as far as they know at the time.  

But again, I ran into an HYIP program where the monitors said it was paying, until it wasn’t.  By then, my money was already invested and then the monitors started reporting problems.  Too late for me! So I don’t stop here when doing my research either.  Its plainly not enough!

4. Check the HYIP’s Aesthetics and Support – Most scams usually have a Support that will not answer you if you send them a message.  This is a very good sign that its most likely a scam.  So send them a message before you send any money and check out their response time.  If there is no response, or they take several days to answer – stay away!  Also, if they don’t list a phone number that you can call, stay away.  Even a listed phone number might not work so try giving it a call if they do list one. If they have Online Support available, even better. Check how fast they answer you.  

Also, some Support will answer you with lies so beware of that too! Weigh what they say against the other criteria listed here and you will be able to tell if they are lying to you. For instance, a friend told me he contacted a Support for some HYIP only to be told that they do indeed pay out $20k if he invests whatever their minimum was, but I found that they did not even have a secure server in place and the site itself was just a one page piece of crap! 

How in the world can they send $20k+ payments on a server which has no security at all?  And if they have that kind of money to pay out to investors, why not invest in some security and something that’s professional looking, at the very least, rather than looking like my neighbor’s 8 year old designed it?

And they got the nerve to say they make regular $20k+ payments? Yea, right – give me a break!  I wouldn’t, and didn’t, trust anything they said in this case, and told my friend to avoid it completely!   The only thing a site like this will do is take your money and run! So please use some common sense when just looking at these. Sometimes, all you need is a glance to tell if a site is a scam or not. This article is about those professional-looking HYIPs that are much harder to figure than by just looking at them.

5. Check Their Domain Registration Date and SSL Cert – Experience has taught me to change my mind about domain registrations.  I used to think that all domains with 1-year registrations were a tell-tale sign that it was most likely a scam outright.  I’ve since learned that this does not matter no where near as much as I thought it did at first.    

Some programs I reviewed, or participated in, had domain registrations reserved for 5-10 years and beyond but still became extinct in less than 6 months anyway. So just because an HYIP may have 5+ years registration alone does not mean that it will last that long, just like a site having a 1 year domain registration alone does not make it an outright scam.  

Most HYIPs don’t last for more than 6 months anyway so the 1-year registration is actually a moot point; however, there are exceptions. Nano-11 was around for over 485 days before it finally croaked.  BitConnect was around for 2 years before they crashed and burned through $2.4 Billion.

These programs can pay for awhile and then stop suddenly. The problem is that you never know when and they never give any forewarning either.

I am merely giving suggestions as to what to look out for, but you will still have to make the ultimate decision to put your money there or not because it WILL stop paying at some point in the future.

SSL Certification – One very important domain check to include in your research, much more important than the domain registration, is to look for whether the domain in question uses an SSL secure server.  That’s that “https://” and lock symbol next to the domain name in your browser.  A quick check using this SSL Test will tell you whether the domain actually has one or not, and what grade it got from A to F.  A is the best.  Stay away from any sites that don’t have this SSL cert at all.  After all, how can they send you the money they claim to be able to send when they don’t even have a secure server in place?

Sites without a SSL will come up as “Certificate name mismatch”.  That’s a sure sign of an amateur or, probably more accurately, a straight-up scam!

Also, if a site appears to have an SSL, scroll down and look at its Revocation status.  If it says “Revoked” in red font, then it means it used to have one and they were up to something fishy which got it revoked and is therefore untrusted and no longer valid. You should treat the site the same way and not trust it.

Sites not having an SSL used to be more of a red flag a few years ago then it is now. Nowadays, most domains come with an SSL certificate automatically, even if it is registered to operate as a scam.

So even if Steps 1-4 all passed and Step 5 failed, I would not have invested in the first place.  Now, I just stay away from these types of things altogether. They are all scams and highly illegal in most jurisdictions.  Also, if I happened to have made money in something like this, it does not feel good to have made it from stolen funds.

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There are hundreds of HYIP/Cryptocurrency scams out there and more coming online everyday to take your hard earned money.  Had I done this kind of research earlier, I would not have been scammed at all or scammed out of much less money, so it was an expensive lesson which you now can benefit from.

All this being said, you should still approach HYIPs/Cryptocurrency-MLM/DeFi schemes, as the scams they really are and never consider them legitimate income sources. They are not. These things have been around for a loooong time in one form or another but they are all the same thing: scams to separate you from your money.

Mike J Anthony

Disclaimer: I operate on the principle that 99% of HYIPs/Cryptocurrency-MLM/DeFi are scams so never invest more than you can afford to lose. If you happen to find one that works…for awhile…hopefully using my criteria above, make sure to always take your seed money off the table first, if you get paid, then decide whether to reinvest some profits or take the money and run.  There’s no telling how long these programs will last – even the paying ones!

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