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Robotics Online (robotics.online) claims to be an investment firm that generates enormous profits for investors. The website was reported to us by a user of ScamAdviser.com. We decided to take a deeper dive as some of the promises made by Robotics Online seem too good to be true.
The website’s home page immediately catches the user’s attention with the claim of earning 465% APY on a short-term investment.
Such a rate of return is mind-blowingly high and immediately raises eyebrows. An unrealistically and unsustainably high rate of return is often the most obvious sign of a fraudulent HYIP scheme, such as Pyramid schemes or Ponzi schemes. Robotics Online claims to have generated a return of 4.03% in the past 12 days which is not something even big investment firms are known to achieve.
To generate profits for investments, Robotics Online needs to have a strong business model. The company claims that its business is “investing in cutting-edge technologies and companies”, which includes “Robotics”, Cryptocurrencies, Startups and ICOs.
Vague buzzword-salad is often used by scam investment platforms to obscure the real source of income - which is the deposits made by new investors.
Is Robotics Online a Pyramid scheme too? One more reason to believe so is the company’s “Affiliate Program”. It is a three-tier scheme where investors can earn up to 8% commission (it was 9% commission earlier) on deposits made by referrals and referrals of referrals. This incentivizes investors to rope in more people into the scheme so that they can earn more.
In a pyramid scheme, the inflow of new deposits keeps the scheme going and it collapses when new people stop joining the scheme. The affiliate program hints that this may be the case with Robotics Online too as there is a strong financial incentive for investors to convince more people to put their money into the scheme.
Something that I found extremely odd about this “investment company” is that they also run a lottery with cash prizes. As gambling is highly-regulated, it makes me question whether Robotics Online operates legally.
Robotics Online claims to have been founded in 2018 and operating since 2019. The website footer contains the following information:
Robotics Online LLC ("Robotics.Online") is a Limited Liability Company registered in the State of Delaware in the United States of America under number 6865710 and is located at 1201 N Orange St Suite, 7160 Wilmington, DE 19801, USA. Robotics.Online is not regulated by a license for financial services. Robotics.Online is a global online platform for the direct commission-free exchange of decentralized currencies in US dollars and vice versa.
Even though Robotics Online is an investment platform, they claim that they are “not regulated by a license for financial services”. To my knowledge, this would render their services illegal even though the company is registered as companies offering investment services in the USA must be licensed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Even though Robotics Online LLC is a registered firm, it did not give me much confidence in the company when I found that the company address “1201 N Orange St Suite, 7160 Wilmington, DE 19801, USA.” is actually a virtual office. Therefore, the company is likely to be not based at the given address.
Another classic sign of a Pyramid scheme is that the people running the scheme never reveal their true identities. This is so that they cannot be traced when the fraudulent scheme inevitably collapses. On the surface, it appears that Robotics Online is transparent about its leadership as there is a section of the website dedicated to the company’s leadership team.
However, this information is not truthful as the supposed company leaders are actually paid actors. This has been admitted by the company’s representatives themselves in response to a review on Trustpilot. On the website, there is absolutely no indication about this fact, which is highly suspicious. While the company tries to play this off casually, it is not a common practice in any industry for an actor to represent the CEO of a company.
While they try to assure us that the company CEO Michael Stark and other team members are real people, there is little reason to believe that this is true. There are no online profiles for the CEO and nor is there any real employee activity for the company on sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor.
While reviews are usually a good way to judge the credibility of a company, it is not the case with investment schemes such as Robotics Online that pay referral commissions. As investors have a monetary incentive to recruit others into the scheme, the glowing reviews must be looked at as advertisements rather than genuine reviews.
There are reviews on the website itself, but there is no way to verify whether they are genuine. They could be written by the website owners themselves, especially as all of them are positive.
When I checked for reviews on Trustpilot, it can be seen that there is a banner that cautions readers that the reviews may be fake.
Looking at the trend of recent reviews, the number of positive reviews have fallen drastically while the number of negative reviews have increased over the past months.
Robotics Online has a few social media channels and the page seem to be active. However, the only contact information provided on the website is a contact form to send them an email and a link to their Telegram group. Therefore, the company is only communicating via anonymous methods.
Due to the reasons mentioned in this article, Robotics Online may not be trustworthy. There are several signs suggesting that it may be a type of fraudulent investment scheme known as a Pyramid scheme. These signs include the unbelievably high ROI, lack of transparency about the company’s leadership, monetary incentives to recruit new investors and the low credibility of reviews.
Even if the scheme pays currently, if Robotics Online is a pyramid scheme it will only able to continue paying if new investors join forever, which is not possible in the real world. Pyramid schemes always collapse and most of the investors end up losing their deposits after the founders of the scheme abscond.
This article has been written by a scam fighter volunteer. If you believe the article above contains inaccuracies or is missing relevant information, please contact ScamAdviser.com using this form.
