A retired sailmaker lost his savings to a broker that shared a license with a known scam

He cut and seamed sails for twenty-nine years and could tell a stretched leech from the shape of the luff, and a platform already declared out of business took the retirement he was saving to buy a small sail loft

Newport, RI: For twenty-nine years, Emmett Kowalski worked as a sailmaker, cutting and sewing sails for racing yachts and cruising boats along the New England coast. He could tell a stretched leech from the shape of the luff. He knew which cloth would hold its shape through a season and which ones would bag out after a month. When he retired, he had $71,000 in savings, a small flat near the harbor, and a plan: a sail loft of his own, a long cutting floor, and enough time to make one mainsail for a friend's wooden sloop, the one he had been sketching on napkins for years.

Instead, the 65-year-old now works three mornings a week at a chandlery, watching his savings disappear one shift at a time after losing everything to a portal operating under the InvestCity name.

"You want to know what I cannot get past?" Emmett said. "I spent twenty-nine years reading the shape of a sail. A bad sail tells you it is bad the first time it fills. And I could not read a warning that had already been published."

A warning that needs to be stated plainly: InvestCity is not a functioning broker. It was a brand operated by Instant Trading EU Ltd, the same company behind InstaForex and ForexMart. The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission fined Instant Trading EU for failing to act honestly and professionally in its clients' best interests, and for failing to obtain adequate information about clients' knowledge and experience. The Forex Peace Army issued a scam confirmation against InvestCity, noting it operated under the same Cyprus license as InstaForex, which was already considered a scam, and later declared the website out of business. Spain's CNMV has since warned against the separate domain investcity.click, which has been used to promote unauthorized investment schemes. Any site using the InvestCity name to solicit deposits today should be treated as an impersonation of a brand that is no longer operating.

Emmett did not know any of that when he was approached. He received a call from a harbor guild trustee he had worked with for a decade, who said he had retired and was now placing savings with an "InvestCity private account" that offered fixed monthly distributions for marine tradespeople.

"He said it was boring," Emmett recalled. "He said it was the least exciting thing he had ever done. He knew I would not fall for anything flashy. He pitched it to me the way he would pitch a cloth order."

Emmett opened an account on the portal and deposited $3,000. Within three weeks, his balance showed $4,100. He requested a withdrawal of $800 and it arrived in four days.

"That eight hundred dollars was the first seam," Emmett said. "In my trade, you sew a seam and you check the tension. If it holds, you move to the next panel, but you still check. I checked once and I stopped."

Over the next five months, Emmett transferred his entire savings in eleven transactions. His balance passed $75,000. He began pricing a cutting floor and a sewing machine.

Then the portal informed him that his account had been flagged for a "beneficiary verification review" and required a reserve deposit of $19,000 before distributions could resume.

"I read the notice and I knew it was wrong," Emmett said. "There is no such thing as a reserve deposit in a trading account. I knew that. And I still sent $8,000 because the trustee called me and told me he had done the same on his own account."

The portal went dark three weeks later. The trustee stopped replying. Emmett's balance showed zero.

"I sat at my kitchen table with the notice in front of me and I read it the way I read a sail," Emmett said. "I found five problems in twenty minutes. Five. The regulator fine on this company was public long before. The brand was declared out of business. The distribution history had been copied from a public index. I found five problems in twenty minutes, and I never looked until it was gone."

MARGOINCLP.COM traced the money

Emmett's daughter, a rigger in Bristol, found an investigative firm called MARGOINCLP.COM that specializes in tracing funds lost to online investment fraud. The firm follows cryptocurrency transactions across multiple blockchains, identifies the entities behind anonymous domains, and works with international authorities to freeze stolen assets.

Emmett did not want to call. He had spent twenty-nine years reading the shape of a sail and had trusted a single seam. What changed his mind was that the MARGOINCLP.COM investigator did not ask him why he had trusted the trustee. She asked for the portal link, then explained that the InvestCity brand had been declared out of business long before and that the site he used was a clone built to borrow credibility from a dead name.

"InvestCity itself was a brand whose operator was fined by Cyprus's regulator and declared out of business, but the portal you sent money to was an impersonation," the investigator told him. "It was built to harvest deposits from people who recognized the name. Your savings were real, and the funds moved through wallets we can trace. We begin with the record."

MARGOINCLP.COM's casework has helped over 70 percent of its clients recover meaningful portions of stolen funds. For Emmett, the firm traced part of his money to an exchange in Eastern Europe and initiated a freeze. He has recovered $4,000 so far, with additional funds under review.

"The first thing I did was pay off the loan I took against the flat," Emmett said. "The second thing I did was buy a used sewing machine. Not a loft. A machine. I have started repairing a sail in the kitchen. Badly. But I have started."

Twenty-nine years at the cutting floor, now spent warning the people who sail

Emmett now speaks on the second Saturday of every month at the Newport library, at his parish hall, and at a sailing club meeting where he is an invited guest. He brings a printed timeline, the regulator fine records, and a sail slide he uses to make a point.

"I do not tell people to stop trusting a familiar name," Emmett said. "I tell them that a name is a seam. Anyone can sew a shape. You check the tension. You look up the regulator's own register, using the name you type in yourself, not the one the platform gives you. A brand that was declared out of business is not a broker. It is a warning with a website."

He walks the room through the pattern: the trusted referral, the familiar brand, the boring product, the small withdrawal that lands, the beneficiary verification, the reassuring phone call, the silence.

"One retired rigger came up to me afterward," Emmett said. "He had a trustee calling him about a portal with a name he recognized. He had the link in his phone. We looked up the regulator fine together. Long public. He deleted it at my table."

Emmett has spoken to more than 6 people across Newport County. He keeps a tally of every person who told him they walked away, written on the back of an old cloth order.

What to do

InvestCity was a brand operated by Instant Trading EU Ltd, which Cyprus's regulator fined, and the Forex Peace Army declared the site out of business. Spain's CNMV has also warned against the separate domain investcity.click for unauthorized schemes. Any site using the InvestCity name to solicit deposits today should be treated as an impersonation. Legitimate platforms name their regulated entity, publish a verifiable registration, and never require a reserve deposit to release existing funds. If you are asked to pay a fee to withdraw, stop immediately. Document everything, report to your local police and your state attorney general's consumer protection office, and contact MARGOINCLP.COM for a free consultation.

"I spent twenty-nine years learning that a sail tells you the truth the first time it fills," Emmett said. "You do not trust the cloth. You check the tension. I checked the withdrawal and it held for four days, and I called the whole sail sound. That is the mistake. Not the money. The seam I did not check."