Cloned firms
A cloned firm is a type of investment or other financial scam where criminals impersonate an authorised financial services company. Typically, the fraudster will copy key details such as the name, address, registration number and brand details (such as copying logos, websites etc).
Potential victims are then contacted by the criminals or are tricked into visiting the fake website and persuaded to hand over their money believing that they are dealing with a genuine, regulated company.
Beware
- The branding of any website may look genuine but the contact details such as phone numbers, email or web addresses are fake.
- Check the Financial Conduct Authority website for a link to the company that you are investing with and contact them through details found there. https://register.fca.org.uk. Avoid firms that give you different information.
- Use the Financial Conduct Authority warning list, which is a list of unauthorised firms and scams. This includes known clones.
- Always contact the firm or person that you are dealing with via an independently verified telephone number or email. You can find this often via their official website and/or via the Financial Conduct Authority register.
- Be wary of unsolicited contact. In particular avoid cold calls, unexpected emails, approaches via social media or messaging services such as Telegram or WhatsApp offering investments or other financial services.
- Criminals may pressure you into acting early suggesting that the offer or investment will not be available for long. A genuine company will never pressurise you into making an investment.
- Look out for subtle differences in website addresses and names (e.g changing from .co.uk to .net or something else or use of additional letters in an address such as financialservicescompany.com being changed to financial-services-company.com)
- Don’t rely on the caller ID on your phone to prove the caller is genuinely ringing you from that number, it can easily be spoofed.
Useful links