Scammers build a professional-looking trading platform or app, complete with real-time-seeming price charts, account balances, and trade history — all of it fabricated rather than connected to any real market or exchange.
Victims are encouraged to deposit funds and watch their "balance" grow, often through a combination of a genuinely well-built interface and direct encouragement from a scammer posing as a broker or account manager.
When a victim tries to withdraw, the platform either stalls indefinitely, invents a fee or tax that must be paid first, or simply becomes unreachable — the deposited funds were never actually invested anywhere and are already gone.