Investment opportunity???

amacca

Anyone have any dealings with FCFA capital?

Relative of mine knows I'm interested (if relatively inexperienced) in investment and told me he was contacted by a company called FCFA to offer him pre I.P.O. shares in an AI chipmaker etc

everything about it makes me nervous…the cold calling, even the mention of AI not to mention minimum investment etc……I told him straight off the bat I have my doubts but he seems to be falling for the sales pitch

Anyone have any dealings or even advice so I could find out beforehand(research if by some miracle its legit) before he in all probability gets burned …..I know betting on IPOs are inherently risky but would be just as worried he wont be buying any shares at all and simply sending the money into a brassplated black hole

Nody

It's a scam; any pre IPO AI chipmaker could hold a sign up and have the vultures angel investors have a wrestling competition over who would get to invest first. Which is why it's a scam; because they would never bother to have to contact a random citizen to get the funding (beyond the fact it would be in the hundreds of millions required in the first place). Hence it stinks even worse than you think and no matter what they present it's all grade A BS numbers only made to entice morons with impressive numbers of growth, returns etc. to fool them out of their money. In the last decade I've seen the same pitch for clean water, solar / wind plants, electrical charging setup (all depending on what was in the news and hot at the time) and in every case pre IPO phase with 20%+ returns a year promised in 3 - 5 years and lo and behold the company failed so sad, to bad. And that's without even knowing anything about FCFA capital in the first place; simply recognize the model (and if somehow it would be true they would once again tap their own clientele for the opportunity; not cold call people at random).

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122480414#Comment_122480414

Thank You..I asked him if they could make that profit why would they be telling him about it and was informed the shares were bought in a tranche on the secondary market etc were initially bought from sequoia etc etc yada yada

I then asked how do they make money which in fairness he had asked...the answer was something along the lines of they take a small percentage when you sell through them etc

Sigh, I'll try and convince him not to get done

Nody

Ask him to look how the investments into Moralltach Global PLC went if he needs an example; that one is still ongoing. Usually the company that you get some kind of interest in, rarely actual shares, tend to go bankrupt in a year or two; though some will ask for more money "because we only need some more to be able to realize the plans" to see if people are gullible enough to invest more to "recover" and "profit" instead of cutting their losses (sunk cost fallacy; if I already invested 25k why not invest another 10k and I may get something back). It's the Nigerian prince simply done in a different shape; ask him if he would invest to get oil money of from Nigeria for example because it's the exact same deal.

Donald Trump

If he wants to invest in a startup company making chips, he'd be better off buying a share in Leo Burdocks.

There is a reason why the likes of Intel (well up to recently) regularly invest billions in manufacturing facilities. That is not to mention all the money spent on R&D. You're not going to get a startup in that space unless it is a new technology like a university spin-off trying to build quantum computers. Even then, it would likely be swallowed up by the likes of IBM etc. very quickly.

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122481080#Comment_122481080

Leo Burdocks, lol, I'd be afraid to use that line on him in case I'd wound his pride!