Most of these wannabe gurus present themselves as wealthy individuals that made their fat stacks of cash through Forex trading. Many even have a nice sob story ready to show you where they came from, with depressing music and stock images to hammer the point home. They tend to be entirely focused on showing off their riches by presenting a lifestyle that most can only dream of. Ferraris in the driveway, thick gold chains draped around their poorly tattooed necks, Gucci clothing, and pics of fancy houses and sexy arm candy litter their Instagram profiles, making sure that you know exactly how rich FX has made them. The best part of all is, they claim that you can do it too.

The term “influencer” should tell you all that you need to know. These people are out to influence you. Everything they say and do is aimed at getting you to buy into their story, and they are experts at portraying an image of affluence that will send your emotions into overdrive.

As the old adage goes, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Forex trading is not something that you can just learn to do overnight, despite the click-bait titles on these videos, and any claim that you can earn big bucks by simply following their advice should be taken with more than just a grain of salt. If making money with FX was that simple, everyone would be doing it.

The question is, if you are actually making that much money trading FX, why would you sell a course, give out signals, or spend your time providing mentorships that will make you less money than just spending your time trading? Well, you wouldn’t.

No matter what kind of altruistic motive these con men might claim to have, the simple fact of the matter is that at the end of the rainbow, you need to pay. They make their money from people who just don’t know enough about the FX industry to spot the scam, and by the time you do start smelling fish, you have probably already sunk a large chunk of change into their services. Endorsements and product placement are their main MO for raking in your money, and although they might provide some free content to get people hooked, this content is rife with generalizations and is more focused on the rich lifestyle that comes with having money than the means of obtaining it.

Let’s assume you bought an FX course from one of them. While it might seem that the more you pay the better the content will be, this is often far from reality. On closer inspection, the $20 and $2,000 courses all give the same info, with the more pricey ones simply upping the length of the course and throwing complicated jargon into the mix to make things sound more legit.

But what about trading signals? Well, even once you have paid the fees and entered the inner circle, most of these signals are sent out to you after the trade has hit the first take-profit level.

When it comes to mentorships, they are generally nonrefundable and you will see a disclaimer that informs you about the risks of Forex trading. This way, when your hard-earned money has gone down the drain, they can simply claim that you are to blame for not following their advice correctly.

While there are plenty of ways to trick people into believing that these “gurus” are making money, there are a few obvious tricks that most of them use.

The pictures of fancy houses and expensive cars are easy enough to fake, as you can rent a Lamborghini for a day and take plenty of pics to post later. Same for the luxury apartment. Jewelry can also be rented, but using gold-plated bling can work just as well to make them look richer than they actually are.

But this is all geared towards building up an image, so how can they fake their trades? 

This is often done through something called hedging. The basics of it go like this: You open two trading accounts and place opposite orders on each. So you buy USD/GBP on one account and sell USD/GBP on the other. All that then remains is to make a video showing that you are using a real trading account and that you made money on the trade. But really what they are doing is closing out both positions at the same time, so on one account they will lose the same amount that they will gain on the other. Sure, there are some small broker fees to pay, but this is negligible if considering that one such video might rake up 100k views and will probably generate plenty of revenue from those that sign-up for their programs thanks to the video.

The fact of the matter is that people don’t become wealthy by buying a random course from some random show-off dude on Youtube. These influencers don’t target the rich, they target those that try to get rich quickly.

Now that you have some idea of how these people operate and what they truly are, let's look at some of the best-worst scam influencers on Youtube.

FxLifeStyle Forex

When it comes to “get rich quick schemes”, few come close to the level of cringe that FxLifeStyle Forex presents. 

FxLifeStyle Forex is a YouTube channel with over 62.5K subscribers that claims to provide winning Forex trading tips and strategies to its followers, but you will be hard-pressed to find anything useful unless you pay for one of their courses or signal packages. That being said, paying for anything that this guy offers is a surefire way of flushing your money down the FX drain.

As with most of these scammy FX “gurus”, the main focus of their Youtube and Instagram is on living the high life. For some reason, this dude wears suits and shades while apparently just wandering around his mansion eating, and trading on 3 laptops and his phone (for some reason). Along the way, he throws out some bold claims, such as that he often makes $1,000 in 10 minutes and that if you go to his website and follow his trading signals you can do it too.

The guy more closely resembles a wannabe mafia boss than a trader and just a quick glance at his site puts the final nail in the coffin, as it says things like “Grow your trading account extra fast using VIP Forex Signals (91.3% profits)”, “FROM $100 TO $10K IN 40 DAYS", and “Number Of VIP Trades Sent: 5008, Number Of Winning Trades: 4851”. If these outlandish claims are not enough to convince you, try out this one also taken from their site, “VIP Signals package gives an average return of $2,500 per week”.

Along with this, their site promotes an unregulated broker that is located in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. When looking at what the motive might be for FxLifeStyle Forex pushing this broker we found a very nice little affiliate program that claims, “We offer 25% affiliate commission on all commissions paid by your clients.”

All in all, FxLifeStyle Forex is one influencer to stay well away from.

LamboRaul

Next up we have a channel called LamboRaul. If the name alone doesn’t make your stomach turn, then the garbage the channel pushes might. 

LamboRaul is the co-founder and CEO of Lamboraul Trade Services which is yet another “company” flaunting a fabulous lifestyle in order to lure in victims. They employ many of the same tactics we discussed earlier and the unregulated broker that this guy pushes is even dodgier than the one punted by FxLifeStyle Forex. This time the main page of the broker provides nothing more than a sign-up form and login field, with sites like scammonitors.com warning people that the broker is a probable scam.

The videos uploaded by LamboRaul are also entirely focused on showing impossible profits and how he spends money on expensive things. Another favorite of this channel is the alleged giveaways they do which range from cash to cars. This is another sneaky trick often employed by the influencers to show their “altruistic” nature, while back at the ranch they just pay some actor to seemingly claim this prize.

One of the most shocking aspects of this channel is that it boasts nearly 100k subscribers and nearly half a million Instagram followers. Just doing some simple math, let's assume that 1% of these followers, if they are actually real people, paid for access to the live trading room on the standard plan, costing $187/month. This means that they could pocket a cool $935,000 in a single month, and that is without even calculating the amount they get for their affiliation with the scammy broker that they try to funnel people to. Not a bad amount for a month of scam influencing.

As with the previous channel, it is highly recommended that you steer clear of this one if you value your time and money.

MambaFx

Now going from bad to worst, this guy takes the cake. While his following might not be as large as the former FX “guru”, with just 226K subscribers on Youtube and 226K subscribers on Instagram, MambaFx is king when it comes to showing off his bling. He just loves showing off and telling you exactly how much he spent on the crap he buys with all that Forex money he claims to be making. This is always a red flag, and you are better off ignoring anyone who tries to convince you of their wealth. As the historian Thomas Fuller wrote, "Money is the best bait to fish for man with."

Most of what he pushes is the same old scam as with the others, but finding out how much this will cost you is a bit more tricky. Heading to his site you won’t find any info on what he charges but there is a Telegram link. Heading to this link, a bot will tell you all you need to know. First off they claim to have an “Over 75% Win Rate!” This, in and of itself, should tell you that it is a scam. Prices are then shown for different packages, starting from $49.99pm and going all the way up to $199.99 per month.

Heading back to his site you will find a button labeled “BEST BROKER EVER” which takes you to signup for an unregulated broker operating from the British Virgin Islands. As a rule of thumb, if the broker is not regulated, they should not be used.

Trustpilot reviews have also not been kind to this guy as MambaFx currently has a TrustScore of just 3.2, and the positive reviews look far from real.

There are also plenty of Youtubers that have tried out his services as a laugh, and none of them have anything good to say about the trading signals sent out by MambaFx, with many claiming that he sends out signals well after take-profit levels have already been reached.

When it comes to finding legit FX trading advice you are way better off just going through unbiased educational resources such as the ones in our investment education center to get a basic idea of how things work. Next, you should find a regulated broker. We can not stress this enough, always use a regulated broker no matter how enticing the bonuses and leverage offered by an unregulated broker might be. Go to different sites, find user feedback, and read up as much as possible before sending your funds to any broker. 

If you still feel like you want a kind of mentor to show you the way, find some books written by people like George Soros, James Simmons, or Bill Lipschutz, all of whom are well-known experts that have been in this industry for decades. But if you want to follow some current traders check out this article on the world's best Forex traders and their social media channels.