Scam Internship List: Be Aware
Gathered a list of fraudulent companies. Hope this can help people on this forum.
Alpha Capital Partners
Daroth Capital
Tobin & Co
Atleutian Capital
Bastien Capital
Chatsworth Securities
Seven Points Capital
Hyde Park Investment Services
Northwestern Mutual
New York International Capital (NYIC)
Selby Jennings
Ivyline Capital
Black Legend Capital
ArcForty
Cherokee Capital Holdings
Leedon Park
Gracewater Capital
Pinebrook Capital
Jump Investors
Amplify Trading
DeVere Group
LBN Advisors
Caspium Associates
Pursuit Advisory
Quire
Sutton Fund
Primerica
Multi National United
Hermes Capital
OVB Allfinanz
First Derivatives
Parcrest Advisors
Eastern Union
Romero Capital
AXA Advisors
Anything about Forex trading you see on Instagram
Remember, never pay for an internship
Feel free to add more names
Hyde Park Investment Services
Care to elaborate? Curious.
You have to pay a ridiculous amount per week for the "internship"
Can confirm they are a bunch of scammers (gotta Pat them first and fake interviews)
Are they distinct from Hyde Park Capital, the boutique IB in Tampa, FL?
NYIC
Northwestern Mutual
Invest Like The Street
I wouldn't say they're a scam, but the service they offer is very over exaggerated and the price they charge isn't worth it.
Cannot emphasize this any harder
Lol how so?
Selling insurance to your family isn't a real job- your commission is the marketing fee the company pays to get pity purchases from your family, trying to help a new young professional.
The Federal Reserve
Could you elaborate on that?
J.P goes Brrrr
Cause J Powell is selling naked puts undercover and takes a shit on them when he hits Ctrl+P
The Goldman Sachs
hahahahhahaha
Why?
Selby Jennings
I thought this was a headhunting firm?
yeah it is...not sure why its blackballed
Litquidity Capital
Seems to be
Ivyline Capital sort of
Yes he markers it as like a mentorship type thing but it’s really just a shitty paid finance course
Greenhill
Sorry you got rejected.
Sorry to hear this was your best offer.
What's up with Greenhill?
Jefferies according to this forum
Aflac
Black Legend out on the west coast
Seconded
They sent me and a couple people I know emails out of the blue like two weeks ago after no correspondence for over a year to ask if we were still available and would be interested in an unpaid "internship" and that they'd be willing to give us "consideration" since everything is remote.
I cold emailed them in April along with every other LA boutique for a summer internship, and they responded in June with an email saying any potential internship would have to be FULL TIME and three months minimum in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, I've now gone home for the summer because they took two months to respond and there aren't even three months left in the summer.
Agreed, super sketch
Full name is Black Legend Capital, but I couldn’t agree more
99% of search funds.
I feel like you should do your research with this one.
Disagree on this one. There are some shitshows out there for sure, but as someone that REALLY struggled initially with grades and finance in general, the search fund I went to was the saving grace for me when it came to junior year recruiting.
Principal there was an incredible dude. Former military, very much a mentor, and kept us involved beyond sourcing. Got to do an LBO model, conduct diligence, etc. Super valuable and arguably learned more than I did in my junior M&A role in IB.
Searchfunds are a great way for freshman to get something on their resume to leverage into a regional boutique in semester internship.
ArcForty, Cherokee Capital Holdings, Leedon Park, Gracewater Capital, Pinebrook Capital...looking at you UNC kids.
Oh god I go to UNC and know exactly what/who you're talking about. They all end up on PMT too.
PMT?
I Interned at Cherokee, honestly still learned a lot of skills in valuation as freshman, which helped me get another summer internship. Also kinda makes sense a lot of search fund kids end up on PMT, the interview literally requires you to walk through a DCF valuation + have prior experiences in finance
some of those kids ended up at pretty good spots afterwards FWIW
Like where? Can you name some BB they are going to? Sophomore at UNC curious.
Is Gracewater a scam?
bump
Pretty sure, had a call with one of the MDs pretty much gave me the offer after 5 minutes. Just asked me one question I think it was just tell me about yourself. Immediately raised red flags and declined moving forward obviously.
How are those scams? Are they just search funds pretending to be actual PE internships?
JUMP Investors is not a scam but I've heard it offers quite a poor internship experience. It's a VC firm with unpaid internships. Have heard the role is brutal data entry the whole summer along with close to zero actual investing work across the summer to put on your resume.
I go to a west coast school and saw so many kids have this. I can’t believe how many freshman they take each summer, makes sense it’s unpaid
I spoke to someone who interned and echoed the heavy data entry but said they had a good experience
Interviewed with one of their "lead interns" back at the start of this year. I asked in-depth questions about what he did as an intern in the past summer and he basically said making the blog and youtube videos for their portfolio company Sandee, which he described as "the world's first beach brand". Took a look at the website and its basically Tripadvisor for beaches with some pictures of half naked models at the bottom of the page. The interviewer's pitch about the company sounded like he was reading from a script and he sounded pretty hesitant to tell me about what kind of work an intern would do because (not surprisingly) the work isn't useful at all.
.
I interned at JUMP too and the reason he was hesitant is probably because the CEO doesn’t like stuff getting divulged and there was a legit reminder about this every afternoon.
Don’t forget to mention DB
Biggest scam
Lighthaven?
Tell more
Unpaid but not a scam
A real internship but I would avoid. Had a friend get an offer start, then quit after 2 days
tell more
Unpaid internship, great experience though. As someone recruiting for HF's out of banking, definitely gave me solid experience to talk about
I interviewed with their "leads" and it was a bunch of college sophomores thinking they "added value". More of a club than an internship tbh
https://www.gfsc.gg/consumers/scams-and-bogus-financial-institutions/bogus-banks-and-other-financial-institutions
Amplify trading, £2000 for 4 weeks, questionable placement the following summer
Just to clarify it’s you pay them £2000 for 4 weeks to work for them
Lmao what? I just saw a dude post a 3-paragraph long humble brag about joining amplify trading on linkedIn
Intro prep
DeVere Group. They’re basically an international Northwest Mutual masquerading as a PWM firm
LBN Advisers
saw that their CEO made another LinkedIn post again for fall internships. When you don't make enough returns and have to resort to profiting off naive students :/
Add Caspium Associates to your list. NYC based "M&A Advisory firm", couldn't be any less legit. Had a friend work there so info is secondhand.
can you elaborate?
Founder (pretty sure the only full timer) prays on interns to compile lists of companies that the he can contact and cold call in an attempt to beg them to sell. He basically uses interns to collect his finders fees as he works with some tiny PE funds to find them deals. Sketchy. Avoid.
The Apprentice
https://people.com/politics/apprentice-creators-donald-trump-scam/
Fight with a dozen other people to 'win' the Apprentice and get a PR job somewhere in the sweatshop..
Pursuit Advisory (www.pursuitmb.com)
Quire (www.thequire.com)
can you elaborate?
Primerica was one I went to an interview for knowing that it might be a scam. Interviewer couldn’t explain to me why I had to pay for “training”.
Seconded on this. Thought I was getting a commercial banking part-time job (which is what they pitched me) my sophomore year of college.
When I asked if this was a sales job, the recruiter told me no. I get to training and they were talking about the different life insurance products we would be selling.
I stared at the recruiter during the training session for about 20 minutes and flat out walked out of the room.
Sutton Fund is a sketchy ‘VC’ that tries to get people to pay to “learn” the ropes
They tried reaching out to me last week.
110% a scam.
Just updated the list! Feel free to add more names and hope this can help more students down the road.
"Anything about Forex trading you see on Instagram"
Yes, but this is true only to the extent that their strategies are bad/scammy/do not work/do not make sense, viz. strategies revolving exclusively around technical analysis and/or phases of the moon. There may be an argument for some forms of backtested technical analysis, but I much prefer the fundamentals with the belief that non-event driven patterns are mostly noise. I am not sure what your opinion is, but sometimes people automatically associate Forex with only scams and forget that there is a legitimate way to go about things, just as there are scammy and legitimate stock strategies.
Whoever threw ms at me care to give an explanation?
Hermes Capital back in the days when I was recruiting. Not sure if they are still scamming people after all these years.
OVB Allfinanz in Europe, piramidal insurance selling scheme
Ok
Older guy here....can someone help me with the Northwestern Mutual hate on this site? It is a legitimate life insurance company- not as "sexy" as an investment banking role no doubt but there are some good jobs there and I don't think the word "scam" is likely appropriate, at least not to describe the Company. Do they misrepresent themselves?
Commissioned sales is not for everyone and I'd imagine that it is a tough way to start a career. But, can someone fill me in on how it makes the list of a bunch of other unheard of shops?
Honestly there is nothing wrong with Northwestern Mutual, its a legit company, but idk it somehow has just evolved into a meme over time stemming from I think a bunch of previous interns making cringe linkedin posts, and the fact that they are at like every schools career fair so everybody has heard of them lol
Personal experience from seeing Northwestern Mutual at OCR (Non-target). They run through a normal interview and then hand you a list to fill out names of people you know to try and sell life insurance to them...
Here’s my Northwestern Mutual story. While I was still in IB, a local college student reached out to me under the guise of networking to break into IB. It was the summer and slow so I met him for a coffee. He shows up with an older guy and proceeds to pitch me on buying services from them. As I sit there confused, he proceeds to pull out a print off of my LinkedIn contact and had a bunch of high profile PE, CEOs and my bosses circled and asked for introductions. I was honestly in shock. I yelled at the older guy and was out of there in about 5 min. The intern actually had the audacity to follow up and re-request intros. It was horrible, awkward and unethical from my perspective.
He could've managed to get an actual career out of it considering he managed to finesse a coffee chat; yet he completely blew it.
Right when I decided to get into finance I needed an internship ASAP to start building my resume. I got connected to NM through a random guy I met in PWM.
I read WSO the day before the interview so I was already tipped off (thank freaking goodness)
Interview went as follows:
- Asked me my name
- Told me about the company
- Said they teach you to invest, may even pay for your CFA or something (it’s been a while since the interview so this is fuzzy)
- DEFINITELY said they outperform the market more than any other investment manager (this sketched me out and tipped me off to them being scammy, just like WSO said)
then
- Told me about their “project 200.” Your very first task is to fill out 200 names of people you can sell life insurance to. They want you to put down your mom, uncle, brother, cousin, professor, friend, basically anyone.... they asked me if I wanted to continue on and sign for the “internship”
- FYI their bread and butter is the kind of insurance that screws people over (you pay an exorbitant amount so they can “invest” a little bit of the monthly fee). Remember kids, “buy term insurance and invest the rest yourself”
- Promptly told them I wasn’t interested but I thanked them for letting me practice my interviewing skills
About 2-3 weeks later I landed an internship at a local boutique bank that got me far further than anything else. It’s not worth it to go to these resume fillers like Northwestern Mutual; it’s a waste of space and I guarantee you’ll regret having it on your res.
Can I PM you regarding the boutique?
I regret not doing it as a freshman. It's sales, so people who are naturally risk-averse (a.k.a 99% of the people on this forum trashing the program) are going to hate on it regardless. I think it's a good internship as a first or second year especially if you can close any meaningful deals that serves as a nice talking point. It's better than waiting tables or some other bullshit like that.
All else equal, I’d be 100x more likely to give an offer to a kid whose first professional experience was bussing tables vs. one who did NM. The former says “I’m a hard worker,” the latter says “I’m a sucker.”
Is Meyers and associates still around? Google them if you want some entertainment
First Derivatives
do you have to pay them?
Parcrest Advisors
Is that for real?
Is that true? If so, how scam it is?
Black Legend Capital
Care to elaborate on this one?
Eastern Union
Can you elaborate?
Romero Capital. People will say on their linkedin how they worked on DCF and LBO but in actuality this is a pay-to-play internship. https://www.romerocapital.com/team That's a link to the company website, but here is a link to the pay-to-pay internship portion https://romeromentoring.com/analyst-prep-program/.
Here's a link to a wso thread about it https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/romero-mentoring-analyst-program
Institute of Economic Affairs
hey can I ask why? I was going to be applying for this next summer. Obviously not IB related but related to finance so I thought It'd look good.
I would add AXA Advisors, they try to sell the position of Financial Advisor, but it is no different than Northwestern Mutual.
They switched their name to equitable now. Atleast the South Jersey/Philadelphia office did. Beware they are adapting
Aquaa Partners in London lmao
City Investment Training - London
£5k for a seven week programme and they say you'll likely get a BB offer after completing it
Those who do it have all been unsuccessful in getting actual summer analyst positions and likely won't ever step foot inside a bank.
alphachain capital - pay to play
This list is hilarious but unfortunately, very useful to many. Here's an another for the list. Silver Alpine Capital
-
could anyone elaborate on this? I keep seeing it on Handshake so I'm curious
Selby jennings isn't technically a scam. From what I've seen, they make IB job postings on websites like linkedin and it looks like a bank at first, but it's just a recruiting website. Then you submit your resume to random job postings. Definitely misleading, but from my experience, not a scam.
Not sure if you're referring to Aleutian capital instead of Atleutian capital, but I wouldn't say that's a scam either. From my knowledge, they are more of a business broker than an i bank (checked their listings while working with a search fund) but not sure where ur coming from on that one.
Have you ever spoke with a Selby Jennings professional? They are the most tone deaf people I ever spoke with. Also they spammed my resume without consent. I would interview with firms only to hear that my resume has been pushed already...
This is shocking to me. I have worked with and successfully interviewed with some excellent firms via SJ. They certainly tend to put you in front of a lot of people, but this is a great thing, IMHO.
LOL seconded on Hermes. My best friend interned there in college. Never touched finance again after that experience lol
Can someone explain why Tobin & Co. gets shit on so much? I don't know anything about them.
Damn. Then you are out of the loop monkey. Just type Tobin in the search bar and see if you can find out. Tobin deleted her comments when she was sh!tt!ng on WSO and monkey's, while talking up her unpaid internships.
Jesus, the head of the firm did that herself?
Didn't she have unpaid full times?
New Century Capital in LA County, absolute scam and the "CEO" is a rude arrogant prick. To give you an idea of how they work, his "executive assistant" when I applied was a high school senior.
Mahalo Capital - Unpaid internship and they want you to pay $850 to financial model during your internship
Piper Sandler
HAHAH Northwestern Mutual that. is funny
Evermark Capital. They charge you $2000 for a 1 month "equity research internship". Sadly, I took the bait when I didn't know anything about, well, anything.
Any $1mn+ day-trading accounts on Youtube...oh wait, $500K+...
I would definitely take AXA Advisors/Equitable off the list. I interned there freshman and sophomore year.
Got a great hourly wage, Never paid a penny, got great experience doing fun and interesting work.
And with that as my leading experince on my resume I just landed a Wall Street IB role.
***Granted I did work independently for an advisor rather than for there corporate office***
Saving
Has anyone ever interested at Cherokee Capital?
When you realize you’ve been rejected by a fraud -
Bump
And lmfao yeah I've also been rejected by one or two of these. Ghosted by Gracewater and JUMP. I know some people who did GW though, and they can confirm this.
Add Venture University to this list
Can anyone elaborate on JUMP investors ? Have an interview coming up with them. Seems like unpaid sweaty work but would love some clarification
Thank you for sharing. I found some interesting names on the list.
I've dealt with some of these companies, and it was an unpleasant experience. It's funny when a company asks you to pay for the internship, so it was pretty suspicious for me. But these companies tend to scam not only the potential employers but other companies as well. My father is the owner of a small business, and he was almost scammed by one of the financial companies. And after this situation, my father has implemented anti-fraud software from covery.ai to prevent such cases in the future. I think more companies should implement such software for their good.
It's funny to find Chatsworth Securities on that list. I thought it's a good company.
I almost started to have a internship at Chatsworth Securities, but refused in the end. Felt like scam.
Wow, I was lucky I was rejected by them.
Congratulations! You didn't waste your time on them, and it's great.
Has anyone here had an experience with Northwestern Mutual? I see them on the list but their conditions are worth trying.
Fuck no
Lmao if you wanna go in on your first day and write out your contacts list and proceed to sell them life insurance go ahead northwestern mutual way.
Don't mess with Northwestern Mutual. It's 100% Scam.
Tobin
Why Parcrest Advisors?
One firm in Europe to watch out for is Candesic. It's unfair to say they're a scam, but have some dodgy practices. Firstly, as an "intern" you do not get a contract and have to report how much you worked in hours in order to get paid a fixed amount per hour. Additionally, their business model is predominantly focused on having a couple of true full-time consultants and cycling through dozens of analysts to do all the grunt work on their CDD deals with only a fraction staying on as FT. Besides this, full-time hires are legit, their get paid a bit below competitors in the space and have decent exit opportunities. It's one of those places that you would take if you have absolutely no other option.
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