The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission warned on Tuesday of fraudsters impersonating its official website, as well as CySEC Officers.
The Cypriot regulator provided a list of five fake websites:
- cysec-regulatory.com
- cysecsupport.online
- cysec-support.online
- cysecgov.com
- cysecs.group
Additionally, CySEC detected cases of fraudulent impersonation of Officers and representatives of the regulator.
CySEC stated:
Investors should be particularly vigilant of imposters soliciting fees in exchange for settlement of bogus compensation claims.
The regulator reminded the public that it never sends unsolicited correspondence, and it does not request payments, or individual personal data.
CySEC further clarified that it has “no authority or jurisdiction to collect fees for any purpose from individual investors, nor does it have authority to appoint anyone to do so on its behalf.”
According to CySEC, these cases are a part of a sophisticated online campaign aiming to defraud investors. The regulator noted that in recent case, such scams usually involve fraudsters claiming to be CySEC officers, appointed representatives of CySEC, such as legal advisors, other Cypriot supervisory authorities or other real or fake bodies.
In these cases, scammers contact clients of firms, regulated by CySEC, usually via email, which include name, address, official stamp and logo of CySEC, and even fraudulent copies of CySEC officials’ signatures.
The impersonators offer assistance to investors with compensation claims with sanctioned firms. CySEC noted that “through these preliminary contacts, the fraudsters illegally obtain additional personal information.”
Last year, CySEC detected a widespread impersonations of officers or representatives where fraudsters were soliciting investors to pay fees to settle false claims.
