Thanks for reading this One Up Trader review. What is One Up Trader? It’s a prop trading firm that claims to fund traders if they pass their ”free” evaluation test. The firm claims that there are no hurdles along the way as this is only a two step process. Once you show them your account statements to prove that you can trade profitably, they will instantly reward you with a trading account of your choice. This can be to the tune of $25,000 up to $250,000.

However, the so-called trading evaluation has zero disclosure on the requirements. You are not told what is required to join the program and get selected for a reward.

While this company claims that they can reward skilled traders with up to 250K, they have refused to verify if these funds really exist. They have also refused to disclose if any trader has actually gone through their hands and got funded as a result.

On top of this, One Up Trader does not disclose who owns the company. They are extremely secretive when it comes to matters related to disclosing the owner of the company.

But this company is also claiming affiliations with some of the most well-known, dubious trading educators and gurus on the internet. This makes us believe that One Up Trader is nothing more than a lead generations scheme for these ”trading gurus”.

At this point in time, you may be wondering whether One Up Trader is a serious prop trading firm. But before you contemplate to sign up, read this review to discover the facts that they have been hiding from traders.

One Up Trader Review: The details that you should know before proceeding

A while ago, we reviewed a company known as Top Step Trader. If you’re familiar with this company, then you should probably figure out the similarity between Top Step Trader and One Up Trader.

One Up Trader is a direct competitor of the Top Step Trader since they are sharing the same business model. The only difference is that the Top Step Trader is upfront with their fees. They are always charging several hundreds of dollars in combine and testing fee. On the other hand, One Up Trader is not saying whether or not they are charging anything for these things. Instead, they are working so hard to make traders believe that it is free to get evaluated and funding by them.

Background research reveals a long history

One Up Trader morphed from Mes Capital Group. This transition happened in December 29, 2016. Mes Capital Group came online in September 2015. It was affiliated with another website called  FuturesProfile. In fact, these two websites appeared to belong to the same person because traffic that landed to FuturesProfile.com was forwarded to Mes Capital Group website. And now traffic that is going to Mes Capital Group website is being forwarded to One Up Trader website instead. This chain is not happening by coincidence. It’s by design.

This got us curious about the domain MESCapitalGroup.com. It is unusual for any legitimate business on the internet to switch domains after every 2 years. The reason being, people want to maintain their brands for as long as period of time as possible. The more you’re able to hold on to a brand longer, the more people will trust you.

We do not know about you. But we feel that businesses with bad reputation on the internet are the only entities that are concerned with changing their domains in hopes that they will confuse prospective clients.

To some extent, that works. However, when a review like this catches up with them, it becomes a shame because the world is suddenly made aware of the fact that a scam just morphed into another scam.

Moving forward, we realized that the domain hosting the business Mes Capital Group was registered to a Kuwaiti man named Sattam Alsabah. When we investigated the name Sattam Alsabah, we found that this man was somehow affiliated with the ruling family in Kuwait. A deep LinkedIn search reveals that there exist at least 200 connections, and most of those connections are always leading to people with the name Al Sabah. You might ask: ”Who are these  Al Sabah people?”

Well, the Al Sabah people have been ruling Kuwait since the 1930s. Their history can be read on this Wikipedia page.

Over the course of their operation, Mes Capital Group has changed their physical address at least 2 times. The first physical address indicated that they were operating out of Chicago. It was published as 141 W. Jackson Blvd Suite 2026 Chicago, IL 60604.

The phone number which they were using at the time was 312-578-0225. When we researched this physical address, we noticed that Mes Capital Group was sharing the same address as Vankar Trading. This is an introducing futures broker.

When we researched Vankar Trading further, we noticed that it was registered under the name of John and Thierry.

Then sometimes in 2013, a representative working with Vankar Trading was selling a ”magic” trading software and course on how to use the same software. Then in 2015, the CFTC caught up with the criminals, and ordered the representative to pay a penalty of $140,000. What was the crime? Apparently, this rogue representative had made false representation of the product he was selling, thereby breaching the rules of the CFTC.

Suspicion

We have received a couple of requests to have One Up Trader reviewed on this blog. When we did an initial assessment, it was looking suspicious. The promises were simply too good to be true to believe.

Who in his right mind can give free handouts to a trader who has practiced on a simulator for a few days? We are talking of getting funded to the tune of $25,000 up to $250,000. Who can give you this money for doing nothing? That’s the big question which we need answers to.

You see, to give a retail trader free money like this, it would be like committing financial suicide. It is like a disaster waiting to happen. It’s like trying to marry from the brothel. It can never work in the long run because you will be disappointed.

What is the ownership of One Up Trader? Is One Up Trader a corporate or a limited Liability company? Is it a sole proprietorship? You see, anyone can put up a website in an afternoon and start making ridiculous promises. It’s not rocket science to achieve this.

Many websites that proclaim to fund traders have always turned out to be scams. One Up Trader is no exception.

So how does this scam works?

Believe it or not. One Up Trader is going to charge you fees for ”trading education”. They will then promise you that if you consume the educational material and pass the test, they will fund you with the stated amount of money. The so-called test has to be performed on a simulator. But the fine print also states that the trader cannot lose more than a certain amount of money in that account.

Therefore, the company is only risking a tiny sum of money to reap huge profits. That’s the scamming part of it.

Our best advice for you

One Up Trader is a scam like any other. Don’t commit financial mistakes by trying them. Use these trading products instead.