The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on Monday added nine companies providing crypto and financial services to its warning list.
The companies include Olympus Global, STS Royals, Bitcoin Evolution, Walker Bryan, Credit Union Fund, My Safe Market, Carter FS, and Standard Bit Options.
The market regulator also warned against a clone of Ignis Markets, an FCA-regulated platform.
“We believe this firm has been providing financial services or products in the UK without our authorization,” the UK regulator stated in the warning.
The FCA is vigilant about financial service providers offering services to Brits. Many are also scammers trying to dupe clients, luring them with promises of high returns.
Notably, the warning list also includes a few platforms offering crypto-based investment services, while one platform providing options trading services is offering leverage up to 200x.
“Almost all firms and individuals offering, promoting or selling financial services or products in the UK have to be authorized by us,” FCA added. “However, some firms act without our authorization and some knowingly run investment scams.”
FortuneZ reached out to most of the companies for their take on the warning, however, did not receive any response as of press time.
Imposters
Warning against the clone of Ignis Markets, FCA stated: “Fraudsters are using the details of firms we authorize to try to convince people that they work for a genuine, authorized firm.”
“This is what we call a ‘clone firm’; and fraudsters usually use this tactic when contacting people out of the blue, so you should be especially wary if you have been cold called. They may use the name of the genuine firm, the ‘firm reference number’ (FRN) we have given the authorized firm or other details.”
Earlier, the FCA also issued a warning against BitMEX, a popular crypto derivatives platform, for offering un-authorized services in the UK.
