Ortega Capital Review: When One License Isn’t Enough To Stop Downfall

The ortegacapital.com website has already been shut down at the moment of writing this review. Despite one loose license and a powerful propaganda, the owners of the business couldn’t manage to maintain the platform functional. 

As soon as the firm was blacklisted, their downfall started and there was nothing that could be done. This Ortega Capital review looks back at their history and what some safer options are for prospective traders to engage with.

Blacklisted While Licensed?!

The case with this broker might be one of the best examples that describe how little loose licenses mean. There’s many reasons why only a Tier 1 Forex license is a guarantee of a brokerage brand being safe enough. Many of these are important risk mitigation measures such as compensation plans.

Unfortunately, when dealing with an offshore service, you can’t count on any client safeties to be implemented since these are simply not required by the authorities.

While this firm was under the supervision of the local authority – LFSA, they were not to be trusted. That’s why, at the same time, they were blacklisted by the Singaporean MAS. 

The latter was probably the reason why the site was eventually taken down. We can only hope questionable platforms like BitOpps get to experience the same fate.

Risks Involved With Loose Regulation

Licenses from areas with loose regulatory standards are not exactly synonymous with high safety. Many of these areas do not provide risk mitigation strategies that protect clients funds, like negative balance protection, segregated bank accounts or limited leverage.

All of the regions with strict supervision require a minimum starting capital in order to ensure long term continued stability of the broker.

Unfortunately, the poor regulatory conditions in Labuan mean we can only speculate whether Ortega Capital was shut down because they became insolvent, or because they were in fact a fraudulent organization. Either way, it was the clients who paid the price in the end.

Lingering Danger

We could trace the ortegacapital.com domain back to 2014. The company used to host a variety of social network profiles, but besides some TradingView information all of these pages were shut down with the main website itself.

You would expect a company with such a long lifespan to leave some digital footprint, yet for some reason there are no Ortega Capital reviews to be found with popular rating platforms like TrustPilot and SiteJabber.

The lease for the website ends in December 2024, which leaves plenty of room for any con artists to step in and re-launch the website. That said, the danger is not yet over, so keep your guard up for resurgent boiler room agents from this entity.

Software Not Found

Instead of delivering the promised trading platform, the website has failed to equip traders for properly participating in the markets. All we could see from the promised MT4 was the heavy advertising on the website. 

The web presentation went into detail on why MT4 is one of the most popular and preferred software in the industry and why it should be your first choice, as well. Sadly, there was no evident way to download it or even access it without an account which had its own issues.

Nameless Mobile Platform

Although the web trading portal we’re reviewing is no longer active, the App Store and Google Play downloads still exist. 

We believe these unpopular mobile options for trading on the go shouldn’t be utilized. Proper protection should be the prerogative, so downloading any potentially malicious software could seriously compromise your data and fund safety. 

Variety of Assets

The choice of products available on this portal was somewhat decent, but it can’t be described as anything impressive. Besides the several basic instrument groups, other, more exotic tradable assets were not included. 

Without clear insight into commissions, spreads and other costs, these products were available for buying and selling under the maximum exposure of 1:100:

• Forex (EUR/USD, EUR/CHF, USD/GBP)
• CFDs on Commodities (Wheat, Soybean, Cocoa)
• Energies (N.Gas and Oil)
• CFDs on Indices (S&P500, CAC40, AUS200)
• Metals (Gold and Silver)

Account Comes With Bonus Benefits

Registering for an Ortega Capital isn’t possible without providing an invitation code. Even if you had the way of signing up for an account, you wouldn’t be able to access any panel that explains the features and costs of the packages. 

What is only clarified is that every account features a referral bonus. However, not even that is completely clear and there’s no insight into how the bonus scheme works and what its limitations are. You should be cautious with such features, they’re banned by strictest regulatory systems for the purpose of preventing the abuse that brokers tend to practice in order to financially manipulate clients.

Problematic Withdrawals

One of the reasons for concern is that, even though the company used to be licensed in one jurisdiction or another, they weren’t transparent about their payment channels at any moment in history.

All of the ensuing problems and confusion were by design, as they prevent the clients from reacting to predatory behavior on behalf of the company.

You’ll be financially drained and left stranded with loose corporate information, unable to get your money back. This is a common fraudulent strategy used by various swindlers like InvestCore for instance.

Try Prop Trading Instead!

Without active supervision from the authorities and strict legal constraints provided by a Tier-1 license, there is no guarantee that the firm operates with honest intentions. That said, this company certainly did not play by the book during the time they were active.

If you’re looking for an opportunity to improve your trading portfolio with a funded trading account, then consider some of the options we offer. Book a free Zoom call for more information on how to start prop firm trading with as much as $180,000 of allotted funds.

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