SCAM! Although not new, Online Trading Academy based out of Irvine, Ca pretends to offer investment/trading education across multiple asset categories like stocks, options, futures, commodities, forex and real estate. The cost is salty beginning at $5,000 for their basic course and up to $10,000 per mentoring class and $65,000 for their passport programs. They have been running informercials on late night tv much like the now defunct Teach Me To Trade. More recently they are using apparently bogus testimonials on the internet posted by apparently paid shills and OTA employees. They even have their own website which implies that it is a 3rd party review site. An obvious clue is the raving five star reviews which all look like they were written by the same person and that other accurate, but not so positive reviews are blocked and deleted. OTA will lure you to their facility to attend a Power Trading Workshop, ostensibly a 1/2 day workshop which really only lasts about 3 hours, time for lunch and registration included. Calling it a workshop is quite a stretch. It is a blatant sales pitch much worse than any time share presentation. The course includes primarily basic t/a which can be found in any inexpensive book or even free on the internet. They claim to offer a one time $2,000 schlorship discount for that day only. This is a lie. They also promise lifetime retakes. But their class room only seats about 20 people and they are constantly pushing for more clients. Where will they put everyone? FACT: Most clients quit in frustration and even though classes and workshops are listed as "sold out", there are more often less than half full and cancelled. And they also promise tuition reimbursement. (Don't you love the way they throw around those educational terms to make them sound like a real school?) Here again, read the fine print and really check them out. You know what they say about when things sound too good to be true. On some websites where complaints have not been deleted, supposed company officials post rebuttals and challenge anyone to contact them at their corporate offices in California. The number is a toll number, not toll free and those who have called find it links to a voice mail and after leaving multiple messages, no one returns the calls. So much for help from corporate. OTA also seems very upset about the increasing number of complaints appearing about them on the internet and are now charging complaintants as being people who work for the competition, frustrated, lazy students who wouldn't take the time to follow their courses, deadbeat clients who defaulted on their loans (18% interest, t hey may be right on this one!) people whose credit cards were denied and disgruntled former employees. Before it was called Online Trading Academy, it was called bloc securties, then momentum securities, then Newport Beach securities. In Orlando, the local office ownership has changed hands five times in a few years and has had massive employee turnover. Many of OTA's offices are located in right to work states which means that employees were probably treated unfairly so there probably are a lot of unhappy ex employees out there for sure. However, one thing that Online Trading Academy doesn't want to admit is that they have a lot of unhappy clients and whatever is showing on the internet pales compared to what goes on in the local offices where clients are many times screaming at Online Trading Academy staff for their wrong doings and high pressure sales tactics. Stay away from these guys
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I remember when I first started looking into trading. I ended up going to a free Better Trades seminar. I didn't know anything about trading at the time, but even I was able to tell it was all B.S. I'd always had a friend who was a pretty well-off guy. His income at the time was about $350k a year, now it's over a million. I'd never asked them what he did for a living. When I finally asked him, to my surprise, he said that he's a trader. I asked him if he could show me how it's done and he recommended a list of books. That list covered everything from Wall Street History, Technical Analysis, Fundamental Analysis, the nature of money, stocks and futures, etc. I was able to take his list and build a solid foundation for myself and develop my own profitable system in a short time. Buying those books (most of which were free eBooks) >>>>> Paying $4,000 for Better Trades
OTA is bringing bad ethics and poor quality to taxes, too. OTA has a tax service this year using an Enrolled Agent, I believe from Israel. We watched his tax webinars and saw glaring errors and omissions. He suggests doing things you can't do - like deducting phony business trips to resorts - and then omits important things like Section 475 MTM elections. OTA asked to cooperate with our firm and we said no because they wanted undisclosed commissions on CPA firm services. Some call it kickbacks. That's considered an infraction of the CPA code of ethics. They wanted us to replace a problem competitor Traders Accounting, who is not a CPA firm and therefore doesn't have a code of ethics and could pay non-disclosed commissions. Too many education sites push traders into expensive complex entity schemes with accountants and lawyers, to cover up non-qualification for trader tax status. They promise education expense deductions for non-business traders and that is illegal. The IRS will deny it. If you work with OTA and their tax service, get a second opinion from a reputable trader tax CPA firm, and ask their EA if he is sharing revenues with OTA or their owner._ Also ask if your OTA tax preparer is located offshore, because the IRS requires disclosure of that and for you to sign a separate letter approving your tax information to go, or be accessed from offshore. I like one OTA guy in Texas and he sends his clients to us with no strings attached!
The analogies never stop: Want to pay $5000 to learn to fly? Ah, can you fly? Doesn't matter..... Oh. OK, here is my $5000 It must be such a good feeling to get FREE money from these students. No guarantee for anything, just to say a lot of stuff that doesn't have to work EVER. They have one goal: Get your money. They likely stretch the truth, but if you are dumb enough to not ask for audited results and a complete look at how exactly they made their money, well then you deserve to go broke. To ask for results is as old as time, so these firms must know it would be great to produce actual instructors that have made money for 10+ years, consistently. None of them do.
It seems everytime the name OTA comes up, the words "scam" and "snakeoil" seem to follow. Many OTA clients became upset when they discovered the huge kickbacks OTA gets for using Trade Station as a broker. And we all thought they were doing us a favor! ENT! By the way, I have yet to meet even one OTA client who has gotten their money back with the so called "tuition reimbursement" program that OTA blatantly misrepresents. So I am not surprised to hear about the Tax thing. I hear sales at OTA have been way down. They will stoop to any level to bring in a buck and keep their doors open.