Is BEST LEADER a scam?
Wikilix independent safety report
BEST LEADER (Best Leader Precious Metals Limited, leader008.com) is not a safe place to put money: it was a genuine Hong Kong bullion dealer for about a decade, but it lost its exchange trading licen…
Risk scorecard · each area scored 0 (clean) to 10 (worst)
Broker Summary
What Wikilix has recorded about BEST LEADER: its history, the licences it holds, its trading conditions and its fees.
BEST LEADER is the trading brand of Best Leader Precious Metals Ltd, an operator presented as based at 46th Floor, Lee Garden One, 33 Hysan Avenue, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. The service was marketed to retail clients across Greater China and South East Asia as leveraged spot gold and silver dealing on an in-house platform, with a listed contact number of +852 2328 1100 and a support address of cs@leader008.com.
Regulation. No forex or CFD licence could be established for this operator in any jurisdiction. The firm presents itself as a Hong Kong bullion dealer trading under exchange rules, but membership of a metals exchange is a trade-body arrangement, not a financial-services licence: it does not authorise the firm to take leveraged client deposits, it carries no client-money segregation requirement, and it gives a client no compensation scheme. Leveraged spot metals dealing of this kind sits outside the regulated perimeter supervised by Hong Kong's securities regulator, so a client of this firm has no statutory protection at all.
Current state. The website the firm published, www.leader008.com, no longer resolves at the DNS level, and the corporate site of the wider group is also unreachable. Nothing on the operator's own pages could therefore be read during this review: there are no verifiable account types, spreads, leverage figures, deposit methods or withdrawal terms to publish, and no signup route exists. A brand whose entire client-facing infrastructure is offline cannot be funded, traded or withdrawn from.
Client outcomes. The record attached to this brand is one of the worst patterns in the industry: a long and consistent run of reports, from 2018 through to the end of 2022, of withdrawals approved on screen but never paid, accounts frozen once a client turned a profit, demands for a further deposit of a percentage of the balance before a withdrawal could be released, so-called credit-score requirements that rise as the client pays them, agents in messaging groups giving loss-making instructions, and deposits routed to private accounts. Reports came independently from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea and mainland China, and several state that criminal complaints were filed with police. Requests for a further payment before a withdrawal is released is the defining marker of an exit scam, not of a dispute over trading conditions.
Who it suits. Nobody. There is no legitimate use case here for a retail trader. Anyone holding a balance with this brand should treat the funds as at risk, preserve every record of deposits and correspondence, report the matter to their local financial regulator and police, and pursue a chargeback or bank recall where the payment route still allows one. Traders looking for leveraged metals exposure should use a firm licensed by a mainstream onshore regulator, where client money is segregated and a complaints route exists.
Regulatory Licenses
We have not confirmed any regulation for BEST LEADER. Money deposited with an unregulated broker is protected only by the company itself.
Trading with an unregulated broker puts your deposit at risk.
No regulation
We have not confirmed any regulation for BEST LEADER. An unregulated broker is not supervised by a financial authority, and money you deposit is protected only by the company itself.
What this means for you
- No compensation scheme covers your funds.
- No regulator to escalate a complaint to.
- No audit of how client money is held.
Global Domains
3 domains on record. All active and served over HTTPS.
Corporate Network
One legal entity behind the BEST LEADER brand.
- Best Leader Precious Metals LtdActiveHong KongHong Kong entity presented as the operator of the BEST LEADER spot gold and silver service. No entry could be opened on an official registry during this review, so the registration remains unconfirmed.
Company Registration
BEST LEADER names Best Leader Precious Metals Limited as the operating company. We could not confirm that registration on the registry.
- Legal entity
- Best Leader Precious Metals Limited
- Registration number
- 1908451 (business registration 61446623-000)
- Jurisdiction
- Hong Kong
- Registry
- Hong Kong Companies Registry, numbers as published on the Hong Kong Gold Exchange member register
- Registered address
- Unit 2202-07, Exchange Tower, 33 Wang Chiu Road, Kowloon Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Brokers worth comparing
One other broker on the record shares what BEST LEADER offers — its country, regulator, account types or platforms — set beside it on the same measures.
BEST LEADER
This recordHong Kong· Best Leader Precious Metals LtdWikilix score 0.0RegulationNo RegulationMax leverageNot recordedPlatformsNot recordedLicencesNot recordedHafoo Securities
Hong Kong · since 2005Wikilix score 16.8RegulationExceededHKGXMax leverage1:300PlatformsNot recordedLicences1
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about BEST LEADER
Start with the licence, not the marketing. Choose a firm authorised by a mainstream onshore regulator, check the licence number on that regulator's own register and confirm the licensed entity name matches the company that will hold your deposit. Prefer segregated client money, a mainstream platform you can price-check independently, and a documented complaints route. Never trade through an individual who instructs you in a chat group.
Former clients describe being told that funds were held with an Australian arm of the group and that the delays were caused by banking investigations there. We could not confirm any licensed Australian entity behind this brand, and stories of frozen banking channels abroad are a routine stalling device used to explain unpaid withdrawals.
If so, stop paying. Reports about this brand describe exactly that mechanism: a percentage of the balance demanded before a withdrawal can be processed, or a rising credit-score requirement that must be topped up with further deposits. No legitimate firm requires a new deposit before it will return your own money. Every additional payment is lost.
Assume the funds are at risk and act on the record rather than on promises. Save every deposit receipt, statement, screenshot and message with your agent. Report the matter to the financial regulator and the police in your own country, and in Hong Kong. If you paid by card or bank transfer, contact your bank immediately about a chargeback or a payment recall. Do not pay anything further, whatever the reason given.
There is no way to do so, and no reason to want to. The website does not resolve, so no account can be opened or funded. Anyone who is approached by an agent claiming to open a BEST LEADER account through a chat group, a private link or a direct bank transfer should treat that approach as a fraud attempt.
No. Leveraged spot precious-metals dealing of the kind this firm offered falls outside the licensing perimeter that Hong Kong's securities regulator supervises, and we found no authorisation held by this entity. Being a Hong Kong company, and trading a Hong Kong metals product, is not the same as being licensed to take retail client money.
In practice, many were never paid. The consistent report across several years and several countries is of withdrawal requests that sat in a pending or under-review state indefinitely, of balances shown as withdrawn that never reached a bank account, and of additional payments being demanded as a condition of release. Treat any promised withdrawal timescale for this brand as meaningless.
The firm did not offer MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 or cTrader. It ran an in-house platform of its own, which former clients describe as a closed system whose pricing and order handling could not be checked against an external market. That is a significant risk in itself: with a proprietary platform and no regulator, nothing independently verifies the prices you trade against.
No verifiable maximum leverage can be given. The firm never disclosed a clear leverage figure that we could confirm, and its website is now unreachable. Former clients describe very high leverage on spot gold with no accompanying risk disclosure, which is consistent with an unregulated dealing operation.
We cannot state one. Because the firm's own website is offline, no published account table, minimum deposit, spread or leverage figure could be read, and we do not publish numbers we have not seen on the operator's pages. Reports from former clients describe deposit thresholds in the region of USD 20,000 being demanded for access to advisory groups, but that is not a published account specification.
No. The address the firm published, www.leader008.com, does not resolve at all: the domain has no DNS record, so neither an ordinary browser nor an automated request can reach it. The wider group's corporate site is also offline. There is no working signup, deposit or withdrawal route.
The brand is presented as operated by Best Leader Precious Metals Ltd, a Hong Kong company listing an office at 46th Floor, Lee Garden One, 33 Hysan Avenue, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. We were unable to open an entry for that company on an official registry during this review, so its registration number, incorporation date and current status remain unconfirmed.
Our assessment is that it should be treated as one. Three findings point the same way: no licence of any kind, a client-facing website that no longer resolves, and a long, geographically independent run of reports between 2018 and 2022 that withdrawals were approved on screen and never paid, that accounts were frozen once a client became profitable, and that further deposits were demanded before a withdrawal would be released. That last pattern is the defining marker of an exit scam.
No. No forex or CFD licence could be established for Best Leader Precious Metals Ltd in any jurisdiction, and no licence certificate or register entry exists that we could confirm. The firm presented itself as a Hong Kong bullion dealer operating under metals-exchange rules, but that is a trade arrangement rather than a financial-services authorisation: it does not permit the firm to hold leveraged client deposits and it gives a client no regulatory protection.
Comments
Share your thoughts and experiences with BEST LEADER