CURRENCY, MTN, GOLD: COMMODITIES SCAMS BEWARE

Let me introduce myself, I am a well educated person, two years of Doctorate in linguistics in a prestigious College in Spain, I don´t say this to brag but to explain this weird situation I am going to relate in the hopes that any of you could shed some light on the situation.
Four years ago, through a friend of mine I met a Portuguese guy who told me he had some gold sellers. He claimed he could sell quite a few tons per month of gold. Supposedly I should find a buyer for him and then we would share a huge commission. I went to skype searched for gold buyers finding a lot of people who claimed to have willing buyers for this guy. I was so thrilled that I dedicated much time to find a seller who would buy from this guy a hundred tons a month of gold making me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams! The Portuguese guy even sent some contracts called impfas with my name among others which signified millions in commissions per month. For some reason or another these contracts (I have many) at the last moment failed. Evidently later research proved that in the whole history of mankind only about 163,000 metric tons of gold have been extracted from the earth.
Seeing, after many months, this was going nowhere I found a guy through skype who introduced me into a new area of these strange "commodities" business called "Currency". It went like this, they sent you a contract for 50 billion USD (I was even sent contracts for Trillions!); same method, you got into the IFPA(by the way this stands for IRREVOCABLE FEE PROTECTION AGREEMENT). Same issues happened at the last moment the deal fell through.
Then I got into MTN sellers, to make a long story short, I wasted 4 years of my life chasing some absurd chimeras. I got some questions for you though:
1st: Have any of you any knowledge of this type of "scams"?
2nd: Why do they do it? They very rarely asked for money upfront or in the process. I never gave them a dime, the thing is that they used to travel and they assumed you would treat them, which one time I did.
I did waste a lot of time on these deals and the mental stress when I realized all was a lie led to a deep depression, I want to expose them, I have documents, I collected over time, I have names, I want to recover the time I lost exposing these deals so nobody would waste even a fraction of a second with them. Let me know what you think, I appreciate it.

If you didn't lose money to these scammers you're very fortunate and you're right to realise that your intelligence isn't the factor that determines whether or not you're vulnerable to scammers. Very intelligent people like yourself have fallen victim to scammers and some have ended up broke and even in prison after getting involved in their activities. I recall one case where even a financial advisor was duped and you'd expect him to be both intelligent and sophisticated enough to be able to spot a fraud.

Your vulnerability is your trusting nature - it's that simple and, if you didn't get money stolen from you, it would have been in their plans and the more sophisticated scammers will invest time and money if they expect to make a lot of money out of their dealings with you. We certainly see many scammers who offer commodities for sale and those who deal in complex financial documents, but they're usually the larger and more sophisticated groups but we have people here who have worked in banking and can unravel and spot these frauds. The scammer will normally insist on all transactions being kept secret because they know that their lies won't stand much scrutiny.

Apart from the damage caused by the loss of money, the psychological damage it causes victims is even worse, whether it's a romance scam or a commercial deal when you find that people you have trusted and been treating as friends have been lying and abusing you, it has a very damaging effect to realise that they have taken control of your life.

You must understand that they are warped and damaged people and, the fact that they have duped you doesn't highlight a fault or problem with you, but it is the scammer who is mentally disturbed and can probably never handle or maintain a proper or normal relationship with another human being.

It is brave of you to recount your experience and doing so helps you to get over what they did to you, and understand that the fault and blame is theirs. You probably still feel a desire to go back to the relationship you had, as the offers that scammers make are designed to be exciting and appealing, and that itself gives you a feeling of a 'high' which makes it worse when it evaporates.

If you realise that this is exactly the same way the victim of a romance scammer feels you may understand it better. Even when the victim knows she has been duped, she feels a loss and depression and wants the excitement she felt during the scam to return. It's a part of the psychological manipulation the scammer exerts over you.

The important things is to cut off all contact, and to be suspicious of other contacts made with you that you aren't expecting. The scammer won't let go easily and he'll try to make contact again, perhaps pretending to be someone else.

Thank you very much for the advice. What you are saying is very true. The thing is that as Napoleon used to say "we can recover money and resources, time never!" Four years of my life down the drain!! with what you tell me, it allows me a critical approach to the past which indeed makes me learn a lot about not only human nature but also of my own nature. I wish I had that detached perspective before!

My plea from now on is to help others not to waste time with these scammers, with all the documents I compiled I can prove to anyone that these so called "commodities" are scams, watch out for:

Gold contracts for tons of gold a month ( I can send you fake contracts to prove to you it´s a scam!)

Currency deals for 50 Billion USD for Euros (again, I can send you contracts) at 15% discount which 7,5 is for the Euro dealer and 7,5 for the USD dealer (your share will be as an intermediary of the party you supposedly brought to the table)

IFPAs (IRREVOCABLE FEE PROTECTION AGREEMENTS) totally worthless, I have saved plenty, if just one were true I would be richer than Bill Gates

Financial Instruments like MTNs (Medium Term Notes), the scammer would claim that he can trade 10 Billion per day!!! it goes like this there are three types: Fresh Cut (FC) selling for around 25% of their total value, issued by for example the Deutsche Bank (absurd) with an interest of 6% annual over the total amount (stupid the bank which would do that, should´t it?), SS (Slightly Seasoned) selling for about 45%-55% of face value and the most expensive Seasoned selling at more than 80% of face value.

Oil deals: this one is one of my favorites, one guy I met, who I came to have a friendship with, claimed to know a guy who dealt no less than the Royal Saudi Arabian Family themselves; so he could sell several tons of oil per month they had spared for him. The catch was that the buyer would have to make a escrow deposit in a Canadian Institution of 10 million to prove he was a serious buyer! why wouldn´t he? nobody could touch that account since it was an escrow account guaranteed by the bank. Of course the account wasn´t any escrow account; what the guy pretended was to get some dupe to deposit the cash and run! He was discovered because once my friend almost convinced one investor to deposit the money, this seller told him to call the bank officer of the Canadian Institution to reassure him everything was OK. When my friend did he found out that the bank officer was this guy trying to mask his voice! bad thing he didn´t take ventriloquist classes! Of course my friend was ashamed, lost credibility with the potential buyer but he was not a con-man and advised that guy to withdraw as soon as he found out.

Finally the best one: Mexican Bonds: Some of these scammers claim to have Mexican bonds backed by US Government Gold at current market prices of 500 Billion at least per bond!!! These bonds are usually memorabilia you can buy to antique dealers for 100 bucks or less if you negotiate. Well the funny thing is that I found some "so-called buyers" who would say that they wouldn´t buy just one 500 Billion bond but 10 or more!!!

Please don´t waste your time and energy with those "deals" exposed before, find better things to do with your precious time, stay with your family, friends, or those worthy moments of loneliness we all enjoy. I wasted 4 years of my life perhaps with the purpose of showing some of you how to avoid that. Even if I help just one person, for me, it would be worth it!

Only you can understand the nightmare world the scammer has caused you to inhabit jatorade and being involved so long is quite unusual. Only the victim can understand it fully and you have to find your own means to come to terms with what happened and recover. Perhaps dealing with others who have become victims is one way to do it. When a victim is caught up in a scam it can often be very difficult to reach them because the scammer has created a bond that transcends logic, reality and common sense and finding a way to reach beyond that can be very difficult.

What you have been through really does give you the right to tell a victim that you know what they're feeling, whereas from anyone else it sounds like a platitude.