Topsproprietary.com: The Prop Trading Platform With a Fake Business Address, Fabricated Reviews, and a 290,000 Dollar Trap
AJ Gardner Frost6 min read·Just now--
A 57 year old father of three from Spokane, Washington, had worked as a warehouse supervisor for 31 years. He had saved carefully for his retirement and for a small cabin by the lake. He had spent his career tracking inventory, catching shipment errors, and spotting falsified manifests. But the fraud that emptied his savings did not come from forged paperwork. It came from a professional looking prop trading website, a WhatsApp account manager who remembered his youngest son’s name, and a fake dashboard that turned 290,000 dollars into a phantom balance of 670,000 dollars in just eight weeks.
In early 2026, the father came across a YouTube ad promoting a proprietary trading platform called Tops Proprietary, operating at topsproprietary.com. The website claimed to offer non accredited investors access to a sophisticated TradeOptions trading engine, allowing users to earn competitive returns on their investments through options and digital currency trading. The platform advertised a beta launch with limited slots available, and the father was encouraged to join a WhatsApp group where members posted daily profit screenshots. The platform featured valid HTTPS encryption, a long term SSL certificate, a domain age of over two years, and no malware blacklist detections. All of these technical indicators gave him a false sense of security.
The father performed a standard safety check. The green padlock was present. The site had been around for years. The design looked clean. He saw no obvious red flags. What he did not see was that the glowing five star customer reviews on the site and elsewhere were likely fabricated, and that the business address listed for the company did not actually exist. He also did not know that the domain ownership was deliberately hidden behind a privacy protection service, making it impossible to identify or locate the true operator.
A senior account manager who called himself David Miller contacted the father daily on WhatsApp. David learned the names and ages of all three children and asked about their school grades and hobbies. He persistently pushed the lucrative beta phase opportunity, insisting that the Trading AI Engine Program was soon closing to new funding. David was always warm, never pushy, and refused to mention money until the father had fully placed his trust in him.
The platform offered a small test withdrawal as bait. The father deposited 3,000 dollars, watched his dashboard tick upward, and requested a withdrawal of 5,000 dollars. The money arrived in his bank account within 48 hours. That was the bait, funded by deposits from later victims.
Trusting the small withdrawal, the father transferred his entire retirement savings, his children’s education fund, and a home equity draw into his Tops Proprietary account. The total amount he deposited was 290,000 dollars. His dashboard showed a balance climbing to over 670,000 dollars within two months.
When he tried to withdraw 100,000 dollars to purchase the cabin he had dreamed of for years, his account was frozen instantly. David immediately demanded a 17,000 dollar liquidity activation fee. The father paid, believing his 670,000 dollar balance was at stake. Then a 26,000 dollar compliance verification fee was demanded, and the father paid again. Finally, a 35,000 dollar tax clearance prepayment was demanded. When the father refused to pay a third time, David stopped answering his messages. The WhatsApp group was deleted overnight. The dashboard remained online, but the withdrawal button was permanently disabled.
Consumer complaints had already accumulated across security platforms, but the father never saw them. Scam Detector gave topsproprietary.com a medium risk score of 60.2 out of 100, flagging the site for phishing, spamming, and other high risk activity, and tagging it as Medium Risk Active. Gridinsoft rated the platform with a score of 72 out of 100, noting mixed customer feedback and persistent caution points.
On ScamAdviser, one user had issued a stark warning. The user wrote: It is a scam website. Do not buy anything from there. An independent investigation on Money StackExchange traced topsproprietary.com to Lithuania and confirmed that the registration number displayed on the website belonged to another financial institution entirely. The investigator concluded that the website was definitely a scam and had been shut down for phishing. The same analysis noted that the website’s grammar and punctuation were unprofessional, that the Whois records were extremely vague with no owner information, and that the platform claimed to be in the United States but was not registered with any regulatory authority.
A Trustindex reviewer wrote: Stay away from this company as far as you can. It is a scam. Their product is of poor quality and the customer service is even poorer. The return is impossible. Dreadful experience. Never again. Another Trustindex user warned: The company is only interested in money and does not help you at all. The father had not seen any of these warnings because he had never thought to check security review sites before depositing.
The domain topsproprietary.com was registered through a privacy protection service, and its true owner information was completely hidden. The website was hosted on a server in the United States. The website’s design had been described by security analysts as poor and unprofessional, with grammatical errors that a legitimate financial firm would never tolerate.
The father contacted AYRLP, a UK based blockchain forensic firm certified by the Financial Conduct Authority. AYRLP’s investigators traced the 290,000 dollars across the blockchain through the wallet addresses linked to the Tops Proprietary scheme. They identified exchange points where the scammers moved the money toward cashing out. They worked with international authorities, including the FBI and financial intelligence units, to freeze a portion of the assets before the funds could be fully laundered.
Through AYRLP, the father recovered 30 percent of his loss. That is approximately 87,000 dollars.
He said: I had already started drafting the email to my children telling them that their college funds were gone and that I would need them to take out loans. I thought I would lose their education and my home in a single phone call. AYRLP got back nearly 90,000 dollars. That is enough to keep their dreams alive and still have something left for us to rebuild.
The Washington father eventually recovered 87,000 dollars of his 290,000 dollar loss. That was enough to piece together some of his retirement savings and keep his children’s education fund partially intact. But every week, countless new victims join the same WhatsApp groups, take the same small bait withdrawal, and wire their life savings to the same anonymous operators hiding behind privacy shields and fabricated customer reviews.
Before you trust any online trading platform, especially one promoting proprietary trading, crypto investments, or AI driven returns, follow these rules. First, check ScamAdviser for explicit scam labels. One unambiguous warning should be enough to stop any transaction. Second, verify the company’s physical address. Scammers often list fake or nonexistent addresses. Use Google Maps or local business registries to conduct basic verification. Third, never trust a test withdrawal. A successful small withdrawal is bait, funded by later victims’ deposits. The only test that matters is withdrawing a large sum without any additional fees, demands, or delays. Fourth, check WHOIS registration information. If domain ownership is hidden behind a privacy shield, treat it as a severe red flag. Legitimate financial firms do not obscure their ownership. Fifth, read customer complaint platforms like Trustindex. A pattern of overwhelmingly positive reviews, especially when accompanied by reports of invalid addresses, should raise immediate suspicion. Sixth, look for security platform tags like Medium Risk, Phishing, or Spamming. A medium risk score is not a clean bill of health. It is an amber warning that should prompt deeper due diligence. Seventh, be skeptical of any platform that demands upfront fees to withdraw your funds, especially liquidity activation fees, compliance verification fees, or tax clearance prepayments. These fees do not exist in any regulated market.
If you or someone you know has been victimized by topsproprietary.com or any similar prop trading or crypto investment scheme, contact the FBI’s IC3 at ic3.gov, your state securities regulator, and a reputable blockchain forensic firm like AYRLP immediately.
A clean website is not a license. A glowing review can be bought for a few dollars. And that small test withdrawal is always, always bait. Do not become the next victim.
