Tim Sykes – Fake Guru

Tim Sykes is one of the most famous (or notorious) penny stock traders. He is the guy who claims to have turned $12,415 into millions of dollars through trading. 

Tim sells DVDs, courses, and newsletters so you can become a multi-millionaire like him. Tim runs multiple websites including his personal blog and Profit.ly. By spending only a couple thousands of dollars, Tim would teach you things that will get a 6-figure income instantly. 

Tim Sykes is a fake guru who sells get-rich-quick schemes and makes millions of dollars every year

He spreads misinformation about the stock market and persuades his audience to invest in the stock he wants to pump and dump.

But are his claims really true? Or is he one of those fake gurus? 

Jokes aside, Tim Sykes, is a fake guru who sells get-rich-quick schemes and makes millions of dollars every year. 

This Tim Sykes review will help you understand the truth behind this guy’s half-truths and lies. 

Tim has written an article on his website titled “Timothy Sykes Scam” and it seems the article is aimed to rank for some of his most popular keywords such as “Tim Sykes Scam”, “Timothy Sykes Fraud” and “Tim Sykes Fraud”. 

I’m saying this because the article starts with the mentions of these words:

He even boasts that his website gets traffic because of these terms. These terms are popular because many people, including myself, know Tim’s scams. And many others want to know whether this reality TV trader is a scammer or a genuine guru. 

The article is a great read because it shows how desperately Tim wants you to stop believing the hundreds of people who look up “Tim Sykes Scam” and conclude that he’s a scam after seeing the evidence.

Before giving my opinion on his claims, let me illustrate what Tim Sykes actually says about him being a scam:

He then goes on to list out several reasons why people think he’s a scam. Notice how most of those reasons are biased, and some are simply illogical:

• Tim claims he calls out gurus and traders for not being open and honest with their students while he is both of these things. So those gurus and traders attack him out of some sense of pride. 
• He claims he is the #1 ranking trader on Covestor among 40,000 traders and the only person with a newsletter. Oh, and he also mentions that the industry is filled with fraud. 

• According to Tim, “evil” stock promoters and “nefarious” penny stocks manipulators try to discredit him because his newsletters and informational products educate people on these things. 
• He believes he gets a lot of hate because he sells instructional DVD packages, an industry filled with scammers such as The Video Professor (and Tai Lopez).

Here’s a breakdown of his claims:

• Tim Sykes trades penny stocks, which are notorious for being unreliable and volatile, causing many people to lose their hard-earned funds, but he’s an exception. 
• Tim sells instructional DVDs, an industry filled with scammers, but he’s an exception.
• Sykes exposes stock manipulators and promoters, so those people discredit him in return. That’s why you should only trust Tim Sykes and not believe anything negative you hear about him online. Why? Because he’s an exception. 

So far, Tim hasn’t said anything that a popular scam doesn’t say to his victims. But all of the claims I mentioned above are nothing compared to the most popular claims Tim makes. 

Before I start talking about the big claims Tim makes, let me first introduce you to him: 

The best way to introduce you to Tim Sykes is through his Wikipedia page. Yes, he has one of those. 

However, it’s obvious that he or his company writes the page because its neutrality is disputed:

According to his Wikipedia page, Tim is a penny stock trader famous for turning $12,415 of Bar Mitzvah gift money into $1.65 million through day trading. He was born on April 15, 1981, in Orange, Connecticut, US. 

Apart from being a trader, Tim is also a financial educator and activist. He graduated from Tulane University and founded Cilantro Fund Management, a hedge fund, using the $1 million he got from his family and friends. 

One of Tim’s biggest claims is he comes from a middle-class family, but I’d be honest, I don’t know any middle-class family that can arrange $1 million for their kid’s hedge fund. 

In 2008, Tim launched TIM (Transparent Investment Management), but the Wikipedia page doesn’t go into much detail about this company. The page also mentions that Tim self-published “An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund”. 

In 2007, he launched TimothySykes.com, his blog; in 2009, he launched Investimonials.com, a review platform for financial services, books, and brokers. 

In 2011, Tim launched Profit.ly, a website that sells his informational products. He has also founded the Timothy Sykes Foundation and is one of the founders of Karmagawa. 

Apart from having a huge banner at the start stating, “the neutrality of this article is disputed”, his Wikipedia page offers plenty of half-truths. 

Tim’s Wikipedia page has a Controversy section, but surprisingly, it doesn’t mention anything about him being a scammer or fraudster. For a person with a dedicated article on his website for this controversy, his Wikipedia page has conveniently forgotten to add this little information.

Instead of covering Tim’s notoriety as a scammer, the ‘Controversy’ section covers his criticism of Justin Bieber and Shaquille O’Neal for promoting pump-and-dump schemes. 

Yeah, no wonder this article’s neutrality is disputed. The entire Wikipedia page is filled with praises and misguided information about Tim Sykes’ ventures. 

Also, this Wikipedia page has failed to mention that Tim Sykes was featured on the reality tv show “Wall Street Warriors”, one of the biggest reasons behind his success.

Tim doesn’t want people to know about his reality TV appearance because what you see on reality TV is seldom the truth, so he’s afraid he’ll get exposed. 

The article doesn’t go into detail about his parents or family background. Seeing how he always claims to belong to a middle-class background, he hasn’t shared any information about his family. He doesn’t mention anything about his family anywhere because it is not a middle-class family. 

In the upcoming sections of my Tim Sykes review, I will go through some of these half-truths and lies so you can understand just how dangerous this man is. 

Whenever we see a rags-to-riches story, we feel inspired and motivated. We feel connected to the protagonist of that story because they show that we can overcome our daily obstacles and become millionaires or even billionaires.

Tim knows all this very well. So well in fact, that he keeps saying that he belongs to a middle-class family, and yet, he is now a multi-millionaire. 

However, whenever he says that he belongs to a middle-class family, he is lying. Tim Sykes’ mother, Joann Sykes, is the great-granddaughter of Rudolph Libby, the founder of Sykes-Libby Jewelers.

Sykes-Libby Jewelers was a successful business with more than 95 years of history. Now, if your parents own a nearly 100-year-old jewellery store, what are your chances of being in the middle class? 

Also, Tim is a graduate of Tulane, one of the go-to universities for the wealthy. In 2005, Tim’s mother closed her jewellery store, citing work and pressure as her reason. 

That’s not all. There used to be a reality TV show called “Marrying Millions” and one of the cast members of that show, Rick Sykes, who lived on a yacht in Miami, is Tim’s uncle. 

What does it all mean? It means Tim Sykes has lied about his family’s wealth for years. He claims to have a middle-class background which is a white lie. He lies so blatantly about his family’s financial history because he wants to seem like a ‘rags to riches’ story. He wants people to think he is some hardworking, self-made millionaire who faced the obstacles we all face while he has no idea what normal people go through. 

Tim Sykes’ followers have probably heard this story a million times. According to legends, Tim’s first stock success was when he was a freshman at Tulane University in 1999. He had invested $250,000 in a company that could reduce ‘fuzziness’ in cell phone communication. 

There’s no information available on this company anywhere. But Tim claims that he found out about this company through one of their ads on TV during a weekend. After that ad, that company’s stock was gapping up, and Tim made $100,000 by selling its shares. 

Even though Tim has such a phenomenal story, there’s no evidence for it apart from Tim’s words. You’ll have to take his word for it; that’s it. 

And the sheer lack of evidence for these claims is enough to indicate just how manipulative and shady this story is. 

However, in other places, Tim says that he received $12,415 Bar Mitzvah gift money and made more than $710,000 in profits by investing it. Again, there’s no evidence to verify this story except Tim’s words. 

Would you trust anyone who claims to turn $10,000 into a million without proof? 

In 2005, Tim Sykes launched a small hedge fund called Cilantro. It was a 1 million dollar hedge fund whose money came from Tim’s family and friends. The address for Cilantro LLC was an apartment in Connecticut under his father’s name, Joel Leabman.

Joel Leabman is a Registered Investment Advisor who faced the loss when Tim’s hedge fund failed. Joel is listed as the Student Support Coordinator on the Timothy Sykes Foundation website. 

According to Barclays, Tim used to boast that his Cilantro hedge fund was deemed the number one long-short microstock hedge fund in the country. Later on, I was relieved that the Barclays he used to mention everywhere wasn’t the reputed bank we all know about. It was a small company based in Iowa. 

After the Cilantro hedge fund failed, Tim launched another hedge fund called Cygnus E Transactions Group. This hedge fund failed miserably, like the previous one. 

For a “successful” trader, Tim hasn’t succeeded with hedge funds at all. His hedge fund attempts led to catastrophic failures, losing everyone money. 

Tim Sykes later launched TIM (Transparent Investment Management), which turned his initial investment into $90,368 within two years.

Hedge fund management requires real skill. If you don’t have proper financial knowledge, you wouldn’t be able to run a hedge fund, no matter how much money your family and friends give you. 

Tim’s failed hedge fund ventures are proof of that. They show how truly incompetent this guy is.  

Agora Financial is a private publisher of financial newsletters, books, and other information products. They offer products from many financial experts; one of those experts is Tim Sykes.

However, Tim’s products aren’t very impressive. At Agora Financial, he offers a bi-weekly newsletter called ‘Tim Sykes’ Weekly Fortunes’. 

There are many complaints on Agora Financial’s BBB page about the poor results people received because of that newsletter. Agora Financial has been issuing refunds for many disgruntled customers who thought Tim’s newsletter would be useful. 

Tim Sykes’ Products with Agora Financial:

Apart from the Tim Sykes’ Weekly Fortunes newsletter, Tim offers the following information products with Agora Financial:

Tim Sykes Weekend Profits

Agora Financial claims that it’s a trading alert service where you will receive alerts every Friday through email. Here, you’re expected to exit your position the next Monday. It costs $2,995 annually and claims to give thousands of profits every weekend. 

Tim Sykes Mega Profit Machine

This product costs $2,995 per year and offers penny stock picks that offer amazing profits, according to Agora Financial and Tim Sykes. 

Tim Sykes Pot Stock Trader

This product costs $2,995 annually and offers ‘marijuana stock picks’ and ‘secret companies’ that Wall Street doesn’t want you to know about. 

You can participate in these services and products for an annual $11,980. What bothered me more is that Agora Financial doesn’t share any performance records of these services.  

In other words, you can’t verify the results of these advisory products. You have to take their word for it. 

Numerous Complaints:

There are plenty of complaints about the low-quality newsletter Tim runs there. In the first complaint, the person only received three penny stock picks in six weeks. Of those three picks, one gave them a three percent gain, while the other two caused 10% losses individually. This person had paid $2995.00 and got horrible results. 

In another complaint, the person paid $920 for the Tim Sykes Morning Profits course for 3 Months. They were promised access to a chat room, but that place had no activity.

Another claim about that product was that they would get to chat with Tim Sykes, but that didn’t happen. In this case, Agora Financial didn’t refund them until they complained about this instance on BBB. 

Agora Financial’s BBB page had plenty of other complaints about Tim’s horrible products. People don’t get what they were promised or are manipulated into thinking they are getting something of value. 

Tim Sykes makes his living by selling information products. He specializes in penny stock securities, which aren’t considered worth investing by conventional investors, such as Index Funds, Wealth Managers, Investment Advisors, Mutual Funds, Retirement Planners, etc. 

In simple terms, legitimate investment professionals and organizations don’t focus on investing in penny stocks. That’s because penny stock companies often have no value, and the volume of their trades is too thin. Moreover, these penny stock companies are highly volatile and can cause staggering losses instantly. 

This is a big reason why financial regulators such as the SEC constantly warn against investing in penny stocks. 

Here’s the catch – Tim Sykes knows all this. And he has found out that if he convinces a substantial amount of people to invest in these penny stock companies, he can manipulate the price as he likes.

For example, suppose there’s a penny stock company called Random Company. It has no verifiable financial history or related information as a penny stock company. But they are listed on the Over Counter Market at $1 a share.  

Now you have Tim running multiple chat rooms and newsletters where people are eagerly waiting to get the next investment recommendation from him. 

Tim buys 10,000 shares of Random Company at $1 a share, and after he has established his position, he starts pumping the stock in his newsletters and chat rooms. 

Most of his followers would follow his advice and start buying Random Company’s stocks. That would cause its stock price would skyrocket, and Tim could dump his position for a lucrative profit. 

After everything’s said and done, Tim would have many winnings while his poor followers would lose their funds. 

This is what we call pump and dump, one of the most notorious things in the investing world. 

Isn’t this Illegal? 

Surely, you must wonder, “If Tim pumps and dumps stocks using his following, shouldn’t he go to jail?” 

He can’t, at least not for pumping and dumping stocks. 

The thing is, Tim Sykes is not a registered financial professional. He is only an educator with a large following. He would have been answerable to a regulatory authority if he were a registered financial professional such as a Wealth Manager or Financial Advisor.

However, he is not responsible for ‘simply educating’ people. 

He can’t go to jail for pumping and dumping stocks because he only tells people to do something as an educator. It’s the other party’s responsibility to determine whether they want to follow his investment advice and lose their money. 

But this doesn’t mean that Tim can’t go to jail. I have covered this issue in detail in the final section of my Tim Sykes review. 

Profit.ly: Scam

One of Tim’s most successful and biggest products is Profit.ly. It’s a place where you can interact and learn from ‘the best traders online’. 

They offer subscription plans and information products. You have three subscription plans on Profit.ly: Novice, Trader, and Pro. 

The Novice plan costs $29.95, the Trader plan costs $49.95, and the Pro plan costs $74.95 monthly to join. You’ll need to buy one of them to join Profit.ly and get your trades analyzed and interact with other traders. These plans allow you to follow other traders and learn from them. 

However, Profit.ly has been notorious for being the hub of shady trading gurus who all hang out there to get their newsletter subscribers.

There are a ton of user complaints against Profit.ly online, which suggests it’s not as good as it seems.  Like Agora Financial, Profit.ly is home to Tim Sykes’ information products too:

The ones I have shown in the image are only the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of information products available on Profit.ly. I’ll get into more detail about these products when I cover the customer reviews in the later sections of my Tim Sykes review. 

As I mentioned, Profit.ly is notorious for being the hub of shady trading gurus. It has a long list of traders that have appeared, made millions through their trades: 

Verifying these trades is very difficult and you can’t find out whether these people have made millions through trading. 

Why You Should Avoid Profit.ly

The Profit.ly scam works a little differently than Tim’s other shady ventures. Suppose you join Profit.ly because you want to earn as much as all the traders on this site do.

However, you don’t know that Tim’s fortune comes from his students, not his trades. His courses (Pennystocking silver), DVDs, and subscriptions are his primary sources of income. 

But you’d think that’s not true for someone who trusts Tim. You’d think Tim is making much money through his trades and would want to imitate his success.

At first, you’d pay a monthly fee to Profit.ly so you can see Tim’s trades. But stock trading is a very time-sensitive profession. Even a few minutes can have a huge impact on your trade’s success. 

After trying to imitate his trades for quite a while, you’d want to understand how he picks his trades. And that’s when you’d start buying his subscription services and products. 

I have already mentioned that Tim Sykes’ information products are notorious for offering useless information at a high price tag. You’ll learn more about them in the later sections, where I have covered Tim’s customer reviews. 

Tim Sykes has started acting like a philanthropist to seem credible and bury the truth. Now, I have no problem with a scammer giving his money to charity. It starts bothering me when the scammer tries to fool people in the name of charity.

Like everything Tim does, his philanthropic ventures are full of suspicious activities. Tim had started with his “Armani shoes for the homeless campaign” where he claimed to give valuable knowledge that could make ordinary people rich.

That venture didn’t work out, and Tim changed its name to Timothy Sykes Foundation. 

Apart from the Timothy Sykes Foundation, Tim is one of the founders of Karmagawa, a charity working on multiple issues such as saving coral reefs, white rhinos, etc. 

According to LA Weekly, the unique highlight of Karmagawa is that it doesn’t accept donations. The people behind this charity lead by example: 

However, when you visit Karmagawa’s website, you’ll notice a Donate button on the upper-right corner of their homepage: 

When searching for Karmagawa, you’ll find numerous articles and PR posts praising it for donating funds to different causes. But the truth is, Karmagawa’s official name is Karmagawa Apparel LLC. 

It’s based in Delaware and has a branch in Florida. Here’s its corporate information:

(Source)

Notice the name of the directors. They are Tim Sykes and Joel Leabman. He is lying to people about philanthropy now; it’s sad and horrible. 

Note that I’m not saying Tim doesn’t do philanthropic work. He certainly donates a lot of money, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s scamming thousands of people every day and in essence, is stealing from them. 

Even though Tim is a shady businessman, I must give credit where credit’s due. Tim is an exceptional marketer. He knows how to trick people into believing what he wants them to believe. 

He has convinced many people to think he is a genuine guru through a compelling ‘rags to riches story’ and a unique ‘$12,000 to 1.65 million story’. 

After all, he has thousands of followers on various social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook and whatnot. The problem is, many of his followers follow him blindly. They can’t stand a negative thing someone says about Tim. 

Do you know what these people do when they see someone like me exposing Tim Sykes and his shady marketing tactics? They start spamming that person with fake reviews and insults. Tim’s fans are notorious for harassing people. 

Some of the things you’ll hear them say: 

Just because you didn’t work hard doesn’t mean it’s Tim’s fault

This is probably the most popular thing Tim’s fans say to those who have lost thousands of dollars because of Tim’s overpriced courses. They start insulting the person and say, ‘they didn’t work hard enough’ or ‘it’s up to the amount of work you put in’. 

The problem with this mindset is that it puts the victim at fault. If a single mom of two kids buys a Tim Sykes product because he claims it would make her rich, and when she doesn’t get the results, is she the one at fault? Are her kids at fault here? 

They would start claiming that if the person had worked hard enough, they would have gotten rich. 

But many of the complaints are from people who follow Tim’s newsletters and follow his investment suggestions. If they follow Tim’s recommendations and still aren’t getting results, doesn’t it mean the recommendations are flawed? 

You didn’t buy any of Tim’s products

This is another popular strategy Tim’s fans employ. They would start claiming that “you can’t give an opinion on Tim’s products because you didn’t buy any”. 

Notice how ridiculous that sounds? 

To top it off, they would say they “actually” bought the product and received phenomenal results. I read someone claiming to get 10% returns within two days after watching an hour of Tim’s DVD. 

These people follow Tim’s logic: Everyone is lying, but hey, I’m an exception. 

Tim Sykes is the Real Deal 

Finally, some people can’t believe that the financial guru they used to believe turned out to be a scammer. So these people start saying, “you’re a hater; Tim is a genuine teacher”. 

In such cases, the person is telling the same thing to themselves. They don’t want to face the truth because it hurts. Suppose this person had been following Tim’s work for a few months and thought buying Tim’s course would solve their financial problems. And then they find a review like mine, and suddenly, their solution seems like a scam. These people would rather believe a lie than face the truth. 

Many of these people go to the extent of posting fake positive reviews to appear genuine and reliable. 

I have shared these examples because my Tim Sykes review will get plenty of such reviews in the comment section; I can guarantee that. It’s also one of the reasons why I chose to post this review on RepDigger; I can keep my privacy safe and avoid getting harassed by Tim’s fanatics. 

I’m not saying all of Tim’s followers are like this. There is only a small percentage of people who think like this, but it’s a large number of people nonetheless. 

The Problem with Tim Sykes’ Positive Reviews

Another shady marketing tactic Tim has been using extensively is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when an influencer promotes a company’s product and gets a commission from the generated sales. 

All of Tim’s products have an affiliate program. For example, here’s the affiliate page of Profit.ly:

These affiliate programs offer lucrative pay. Suppose you’re an affiliate of Profit.ly and get 50% of every sale you generate. For every $3,000 course you sell, you will receive $1,500, which is a lot of money.

Many blogs and influencers know how lucrative this affiliate program is. They have written Tim Sykes reviews on their blogs and websites to capitalise on it. Now, if you’d get $1500 for selling a Tim Sykes course, wouldn’t it be better to only praise the course? 

That’s why the internet is filled with numerous blogs claiming to provide a genuine review of Tim Sykes’ courses, Profit.ly, Millionaire Challenge, and his other products. These reviews have a tiny affiliate link, and they all make money by recommending Tim’s horrible products. 

It is a horrible marketing tactic because people read those blogs thinking they are getting an honest opinion, while they are getting a selfish opinion. 

Tim Sykes has been running his scam for many years. And throughout these years, plenty of people have complained about their terrible experiences with his products. 

Reading some of these reviews is gut-wrenching because these people lost thousands of dollars from their savings. These people hoped they would overcome financial problems through hard work and following the expertise of a financial guru, but they had no idea they were getting scammed. 

Anyway, here are some of the Tim Sykes reviews, or should I say “Tim Sykes complaints” you’d find online: 

Tim Sykes is a Scammer 

According to this complaint, Elizabeth had signed up for one of Tim’s newsletters. However, even though they followed Tim’s suggestions, they didn’t get the promised results. So they called their customer service but got no response. They lost around $3,000 because of all this. This person wanted any advice on getting their money back, but fraudsters like Tim Sykes don’t let you get your funds back. 

Pump-And-Dump Regimen

This person says they had bought the Tim Sykes’ Weekend Trader service, and their experience was very painful. As I explained, this person also suspects Tim runs a pump-and-dump regimen. According to this review, buying Tim’s subscriptions isn’t worth it because you can’t use the advice properly. 

Tim Should be in Jail

Wayne here had bought Tim’s Weekend Profits program, but even after 29 weeks, they didn’t have any results. They lost $2000 and wanted to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, which, honestly, would be the right thing to do if such a thing happened. 

Total Scam

This person had bought Tim’s Penny Stock Millionaire product, and their experience was horrible. According to this review, the course doesn’t offer anything of value, and when they requested a refund, they were refused due to some tricky Terms and Conditions. 

He is a Fraud

This complaint concerns Tim’s shady marketing tactics to promote his products. They also complain about how Tim’s products charge a fortune for terrible investing advice. Another thing this person says is you can get a lot of such information for free, so you don’t have to pay Tim just because he tells you to. I can’t help but agree with this complaint. 

There were many other complaints about Tim Sykes and his numerous information products. However, if I talked about all of them, this article would take longer than Webster’s Dictionary. Hence, I have only shared some of Tim Sykes’s reviews here. You can easily find out more of such complaints by googling Tim Sykes’s complaint or Tim Sykes’s scam, or anything negative. 

“Tim Sykes is a scam” – Actual PennyStock Traders. 

Tim’s clients are the only people who hate him. Many traders hate him because of his shady marketing tactics and numerous scams. 

There’s a community of penny stock traders where someone shared their experience with Tim’s Millionaire Challenge. Many traders shared their opinion on this matter:

This person had a phone call for the program, and the sales guy they talked to told them that they could “exit the rat race” and “change their life” by doing the following things:

• Start right away
• Spend only 10 hours a week 
• Pay $6,950 in tuition fees.
• Don’t give up

It sounds like a “get rich-quick scheme”. 

You and I aren’t the only people who notice how fishy this sales guy sounds. This person didn’t sign up for the course and shared their experience with others in the community. 

Many people said it was an intelligent decision and not worth spending thousands of dollars on Tim’s courses. Using that money to trade and learn through experience would be best because it’s the best teacher. 

You can read this thread here.

Reddit isn’t the only place where traders bash Tim’s courses. You can find plenty of people exposing Tim’s half-truths and his shady business model on other social media platforms. 

For example, here’s a Quora user sharing their opinion on Tim Sykes’ course:

Tim Sykes’s review would be incomplete if I didn’t share this here. 

So one day, Tim held an “Ask me Anything” session on Reddit. He probably thought it would help his brand image or something. 

He boasted about himself and told the same story he had told a thousand times to others:

Notice how this post has zero upvotes. That’s because his fans couldn’t spam upvotes here. 

The comment section of this AMA session is a treasure chest. Tim didn’t answer any questions, probably because he couldn’t. 

The top comment is, “Hmm. Tim, you need a better social media guy”. 

Then a past victim shared their experience with Tim’s information products. They lost thousands of dollars because of him. Tim couldn’t answer them either.

The comment section is filled with Tim’s fans who created new accounts to ‘rig’ it and started saying the same stuff I mentioned. 

Here’s another interesting question Tim couldn’t answer:

You can read this Reddit thread here if you want to laugh.