The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) today issued a warning regarding 12 unauthorized investment firms.
The following websites do not belong to an entity which has been granted an authorization for the provision of investment services and/or the performance of investment activities, as provided for in Article 5 of Law 87 (I)/2017:
- en-rev.com
- wrxst-global.com
- primexbtoptions.com
- charlgate.net
- 91fp.org
- cfdadvanced.com
- cfdadv.com
- mt5expo.com
- marketing-kindom.com
- everfxx.co.uk
- colmex24.com
- ntbfinancialmarket.com
Let’s note that the list includes Forex, CFD and stock brokers, as well as clones of regulated firms. The clone entities are unregulated fraudulent firms that abuse the data of regulated firms in order to mislead potential investors.
CySEC advises investors to consult its website (www.cysec.gov.cy), before conducting business with investment firms, in order to ascertain the entities which are licensed to provide investment services and/or investment activities.
The Cypriot regulator has itself been targeted by scammers. In August 2021, for instance, CySEC warned against an impostor website. The fake website is hosted in India is set up as an imposter of CySEC’s main site. The imposter website, cysecgov.com, is a scam which for whatever reason is only showing CySEC news bulletins through to October 2020.
This is not the first time that CySEC has had to deal with imposters or impersonators. FNG reported in 2020 that individuals claiming to be CySEC officers or appointed representatives were soliciting investors for fees, in exchange for settlement of bogus compensation claims related to conduct of business with a number of firms under CySEC’s supervision.