Special Series – Platforms of Evil Part 2
by David J
Airsoft, one of the leading brands in the industry priding itself in its cleanliness facilitates scammers and profits from their scams.
We kick off our series of special reports covering the hidden evils of the trading platforms industry with a well-known, yet surprising name – Airsoft. Airsoft, for those of our readers not familiar with the world of trading platforms, is one of the biggest players in the industry, ran by executives who have been at the core of the international foreign exchange (FOREX) trading for decades and boasting for keeping the highest standards of transparency and cleanliness in the business.
The company, operating from Cyprus and Hong Kong, offers Binary Options, Forex and, quite uniquely in the field, CFDs (Contracts for Difference) trading. The company specializes in selling white labels to traders. White labels are templated platforms that are customized to meet the particular needs of every trader. Most of the industry relies on the use of white-label trading platforms, like the ones offered by Airsoft.
Airsoft is headed by Shay Benhamou, a famous and respected man, who has worked in various functions in Foreign Exchange trading for decades in leading financial institutions. He is a member of the ‘Financial Commission’ (an independent organization, operating from Hong Kong, regulating the online trading and blockchain industries) and was selected to serve in the organization’s Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC), a unit comprised of 24 experts, tasked with mediating and resolving disputes in the field.
The Financial Commission, which Benhamou is a senior member of, has certified Airsoft as a clean, fair and transparent platform, but the truth is, unfortunately, much darker. According to allegations we have received from former employees, Airsoft is far from clean and certainly not transparent. In fact, on several different occasions, it has allowed scammers, who had their trading platforms shut down by authorities, open new brands, using their white label, with the same algorithms used to defraud clients in the shady platform that were shut down. In several cases the same, fraudulent code, has been used to open several new fraudulent brands, in the Airsoft platform, that appear to have nothing to do with the old, fraudulent brands.
Airsoft is an effective ‘laundering’ fraudulent sites. It provides criminals with a way to clean all traces of linkage to previous scams they ran, giving them new looking sites using the same algorithms run by the same criminals as their old scams. Airsoft remains in touch with the criminals, knowing of their problematic history and implements the fraudulent code in their new brands – knowing full and well that they are used to defraud investors. By facilitating these criminal actions they are becoming a part of the crime itself. Airsoft profit from those brands, often encouraging its criminal clients to open several at a time, and by doing do they are colluding with the criminals in order to defraud investors for their own personal profit.
This is, as will be shown in this series, a common practice in the industry. But very few of the facilitating platforms come with the pedigree that Airsoft and its executives carry. The certification is given by the ‘Financial Commission’ is a sham, because for all that can be said about Airsoft – it is certainly not running a clean and transparent platform as proclaimed. Furthermore, Mr. Benhamou, one of the most experienced professionals in the world of Forex trading makes a fortune by facilitating scams in his platform. He certainly does not seem to be the right person to participate in the industry’s Dispute Resolution Committee. As will be revealed, he is not the only member of that committee with skeletons in their closet.
We urge our readers to avoid investing through Airsoft run brands until the matter is resolved and all of the fraudulent sites are flagged and permanently removed from the platform. We call on the ‘Financial Commission’ to revoke the certification they have given Airsoft and launch an investigative effort to get to the bottom of these crimes. All of the information that was provided by the whistleblowers and was gathered in the subsequent investigations was shared with the relevant authorities (national and international) and we hope that they will take the necessary measures to assure a safe and transparent trading grounds for all investors. Removing criminals, and criminal facilitators, from the industry, is the only way the industry can progress and prosper.
