Every Joe Six-Pack seems to be jumping in on the Iraqi Dinar scam thinking they are going to become overnight millionaires. Unfortunately for these financially unsophisticated types, the Iraqi dinar “investment” opportunity is a scam. Plain and simple.
It’s has been around since 2012 and its amazing people are still buying into it. Even celebrity financial advisor for idiots, Dave Ramsey laughs at people calling into his show asking about investing in the Iraqi Dinar scam.
Scammers promise that millions of dollars in profits are virtually guaranteed. However, you must buy the dinars at today’s value of 1190 Dinars for a single US dollar.
The opportunity is pitched as a way to profit from a nearly worthless Iraqi dinar. Scammers claim the dinar will increase after the US government and the Iraqi government remonetize it “any day now.”
Unfortunately for the uneducated investors, the long-awaited remonetization never seems to come.
Scammers also pitch the scam that the Iraqi Dinar has nowhere to go but up. However, this isn’t always true.
Iraqi Dinar scam operators also have claimed that this near-mythical event will occur any day now for nearly a decade. Middlemen in the scheme tell investors they have the inside track from the White House and the United Nations.
The Iraqi Dinar Scam: Lack of Registration
It is illegal in the U.S. and most other major economies to market an investment without appropriate securities registration. The scammers get around this requirement in two ways.
First, it is technically legal to sell hard currency for its numismatic value. In other words, it is possible to sell hard currency as a “collector’s item.” Second, some dealers will register with the U.S. Treasury as a Money Service Business (MSB).
Dinar dealers will register as an MSB to put on the appearance of registration and government oversight. However, the difference between a legitimate MSBs and dinar dealers is that real MSBs are not marketing an investment.
So ask yourself, if a business has to lie to get around registration are they really making a legitimate offer?
The Iraqi Dinar Scam: The Misleading Hype Of The Dinar
Investment in dinars is often illustrated with references to the Kuwaiti dinar following the first Gulf War. Scammers also use the German Deutschmark following World War 2 as a comparison. These would be good examples except that neither one was a free-floating currency at the time.
No rational investor would base an investing decision on two instances of past data involving two different governments. They would also look at all the times this investing strategy did not pay off.
Smart investors will ask important questions. Like, will the Iraqi government pursue a policy of currency appreciation in the future? Since an appreciating currency makes funding your brand new government and paying off past debts more expensive it seems unlikely. Iraq’s economic situation is more likely to experience a currency crash or intentional devaluation than a sudden and dramatic reflation.
The dinar will likely depreciate further in the near term based on its recent history. The fallacy that dinar dealers are relying on is that a growing economy will result in a stronger currency. That is not the case. As the recent examples of Venezuela, Turkey and Mexico show.
Dinar dealers refer to the value of the Iraqi dinar prior to the 1990 Kuwaiti invasion (1 dinar = $3+ US Dollars) as evidence that the potential for the dinar is theoretically unlimited. The pre-1990 Dinar was arbitrarily set by Saddam Hussein and was later demonetized.
The Iraqi Dinar Scam: Trump Fans Believe Trump Will Make Them Dinar Millionaires
Trump supporters believe Trump is going to make them millionaires by investing in the Iraqi Dinar. Dinar dealers are passing around a video of President Trumpat a 2017 press conference. Inthe clip, Trump says, with characteristic vagueness, that all currencies will soon “be on a level playing field.”
In reality, Trump was talking abouttrade imbalances with China.
Trump supporter Hayes Kotseos interpreted Trump’s rambling statement as proof that the Iraqi dinar would soon be worth as much or even more than the dollar. She also believed it would make anyone who had been smart enough to buy in early a millionaire.
Kotseos told The Daily Beast:
“I love my president, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,’”
Kotseos said the investment cost her and her husband somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. Two of her adult children have bought millions of more dinars, too.
Kotseos hopes that Trump and the Iraqi government will somehow “revalue” or “RV” the currency, boosting its current value of less than $0.001 to $3 or $4.
The persistently low value has inspiredwarningsfrom state regulators and severalindictments against dinar sellers accused of misleading investors about the currency’s prospects. However, those warnings haven’t stopped dinar investors from buying and counting on the much-awaited remonetization to make them rich.
While it’s difficult to measure how many Americans have invested in the dinar, court papers related to dinar scams often mention millions of dollars worth of dinar purchases. Dinar holders regularly tweet Trump and various Iraqi government Twitter accounts demanding to know when they will enact the revaluation.
foreign currenciesIraqi DinarIraqi Dinar revaluationIraqi Dinar scamTrump SupportersTrump supporters iraqi dinar
