Is Auto Premium Trades a Scam?

When we at FXCanary sit down to judge whether a broker is safe to trade with, we do not rely on marketing pages or glossy website copy. Our methodology starts with the hard, verifiable facts: who the legal entity is, where it is registered, which regulators hold its licence, and whether the broker's own claims line up with public registers. From there we weigh the strength of each regulatory regime, the transparency of the broker's disclosures, and any red flags such as missing contact details, cloned domains, or a total absence of independent user feedback.

For Auto Premium Trades, the picture is unusually thin. Our records show a legal entity named TopFX Ltd, registered in the United Kingdom at 13 Plover Way, London, SE16 7TS, and incorporated on 28 November 2022. The official domain is autopremiumtrades.com. Yet the broker lists zero employees, and our risk engine flags that there is no verifiable website or social-media presence. That combination — a recently incorporated entity, no staff on record, and no visible online footprint — is exactly the profile that warrants caution, even before we look at the licences.

Auto Premium Trades holds two licences on file, and they sit at opposite ends of the investor-protection spectrum. The first is a CySEC Market Making (MM) licence, number 138/11, issued in Cyprus. CySEC is a full European regulator, and a Market Making licence means the broker is authorised to trade against its own clients. That is not inherently a problem — many reputable brokers do it — but it does mean the broker's interests can conflict with yours, and it places a heavy burden on the firm to manage that conflict fairly.

The second licence is a Derivatives Trading License (EP) from the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (FSA), number SD037. The Seychelles is an offshore jurisdiction with a far lighter regulatory touch. There is no equivalent of the European investor-compensation scheme, and client-fund segregation rules are weaker and less consistently enforced. For a trader, this means that if the broker fails, your recovery prospects are significantly worse than they would be under a European regime.

Under the CySEC licence, clients benefit from the Investor Compensation Fund (ICF), which in Cyprus covers up to €20,000 per eligible client in the event of the broker's default. Client money must be segregated from the firm's own funds, and the broker is subject to ongoing capital and reporting requirements. Negative-balance protection, while not a statutory right in the same way as in some other EU states, is a common feature of CySEC-regulated retail accounts, and the regulator expects firms to act in the client's best interest under MiFID rules.

Under the Seychelles FSA licence, none of those protections apply. There is no compensation scheme, no statutory negative-balance protection, and segregation rules are far less prescriptive. In practice, a Seychelles-licensed broker can operate with a much smaller capital buffer and far less regulatory oversight. For a trader, the practical difference is stark: under CySEC you have a defined safety net; under FSA Seychelles you are largely relying on the broker's goodwill and solvency.

The presence of a Seychelles licence alongside a CySEC one is a common structure in the retail forex industry. Brokers often use an offshore entity to serve clients in jurisdictions where the European regime is too restrictive, or to offer higher leverage and fewer restrictions. But for the client, the offshore entity is the riskier counterparty. If you are onboarded to the Seychelles entity, you lose the protections of the European regime, even though the same brand name may appear on both.

In our assessment, the dual-licence structure at Auto Premium Trades is a red flag only if the broker routes clients to the offshore entity without clear disclosure. We have no evidence of that happening here, but we also have no evidence of the broker's client-facing disclosures at all, because there is no verifiable website. That absence of transparency is itself a concern — a broker that cannot show its own terms, risk warnings, and entity selection process is not one we can recommend with confidence.

Our records show zero clone or impersonator sites for Auto Premium Trades, and that is a small positive. Many scam operations are built around cloning a legitimate broker's name and website to steal deposits, and the fact that no such clones have been detected suggests the broker's name is not yet being actively abused. However, that could simply reflect how little visibility the broker has — scammers rarely bother cloning a brand that has no reputation to trade on.

The more pressing risk is the reverse: a trader searching for 'Auto Premium Trades' may be directed to a lookalike domain or a social-media page that has nothing to do with the real firm. Because the official site is not verifiable, we cannot confirm what the genuine platform looks like, which makes it impossible for us to give you a reliable 'this is the real one' reference. Until the broker establishes a clear, verifiable web presence, the impersonation risk remains elevated for anyone trying to find them.

One of the most telling data points in our file is the employee count: zero. For a company incorporated in 2022 and holding two licences, having no staff on record is unusual. It could mean the firm is a shell or a pass-through entity, or it could simply mean our records are incomplete. Either way, it is not a sign of a well-resourced operation, and it compounds the lack of independent user reviews — we have found no verified feedback from any trader who has used Auto Premium Trades.

We want to be plain about this: the absence of reviews is not proof of a scam. Many young brokers have not yet accumulated a public track record. But in the forex world, where trust is built on transparency and a history of fair dealing, a broker with no verifiable presence and no user feedback is a blank slate — and a blank slate is not a reason to hand over your money. It is a reason to wait, to ask questions, and to demand verifiable answers.

If you are considering Auto Premium Trades, the first step is to verify the entity you are actually dealing with. Ask the broker for its full legal name and its licence numbers, then cross-check those against the public registers of CySEC and the Seychelles FSA. Do not accept a screenshot or a PDF — go to the regulator's own website and search. If the broker cannot or will not provide this, treat that as a major warning sign.

Second, find out which entity will hold your account. If you are onboarded to the Seychelles entity, understand that you are giving up the protections of the European regime. If you are onboarded to the CySEC entity, confirm that your funds are segregated and that you are covered by the ICF. Third, start with a deposit you can afford to lose, and never send funds to a bank account that does not match the regulated entity's name. Finally, keep your own records of all communications and terms — if a dispute arises, you will need them.

Our Scam Risk Score for Auto Premium Trades is 43 out of 100, which we classify as 'Guarded'. That is not a clean bill of health, but it is also not a definitive scam warning. The score is built from the regulatory licences (which are real and verifiable), the absence of any detected clones, and the offsetting negatives of no verifiable website, no social-media presence, and no employee records. In our framework, a score in this range means 'proceed with extreme caution and only with money you can afford to lose'.

We cannot recommend Auto Premium Trades to a retail trader at this stage. The lack of a verifiable online presence alone is disqualifying for most prudent investors — you cannot trade with a broker you cannot find, and you cannot verify the terms of a platform you cannot see. If the broker resolves these gaps — publishes a live, verifiable website, discloses its entity structure clearly, and accumulates a genuine track record — we would revisit our assessment. Until then, our advice is to treat Auto Premium Trades as an unproven entity and to look for brokers with a longer, more transparent history.