Ina Opperman

By Ina Opperman

Business Journalist


FSCA warns that scammers are impersonating financial services providers

Are you really dealing with your broker or investment company when you pay over money? How can you be sure you are not dealing with scammers?


The FSCA has warned consumers that individuals or entities are impersonating financial service providers and that they must take care and ensure that they are in fact transacting with the financial service provider and not the scammers.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) says these individuals or entities fraudulently solicit investments from consumers by impersonating authorised financial services providers or claiming that they are associated with them.

The FSCA suspects they do this to lend a false sense of legitimacy to their fraudulent operations as the impersonators are not authorised to conduct financial services business. In fact, it is a criminal offence to conduct unauthorised business and against the law to impersonate other businesses or make false claims of association.

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Scammers usually use social media

The impersonators often use social media platforms to make investment or trading offers and the FSCA advises consumers to contact the authorised financial service provider directly to confirm that the offer is legitimate.

The FSCA says consumers must be extremely careful when dealing with investment or trading offers on social media platforms, as well as with unsolicited investment or trading offers on social media platforms.

Financial services business refers to people advising consumers on investing their funds and is often done in the form of offering investment opportunities. It also refers to people dealing with investments from consumers, including receiving funds, making investments on behalf of consumers and trading in any financial product for or on behalf of consumers or enabling consumers to trade in financial products.

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Here are some of the scammers

The FSCA made the list below of recent instances of impersonation to help consumers identify scammers. The impersonators are listed in the first column, the name of the legitimate authorised financial services provider in the second and the social media platform the impersonators use in the third column.

The legitimate businesses have confirmed that they are not in any manner associated with the impersonators.

 IMPERSONATORLEGITIMATE (AUTHORISED) FINANCIAL SERVICES PROVIDERCOMMENT
Exness MT4 tradeExness ZA (Pty) Ltd – FSP 51024Uses Telegram to solicit investments by promising unrealistic returns
Latitude Revenue Investors and Daniel DelportLatitude Wealth (Pty) Ltd – FSP 51086Operating on WhatsApp promising unrealistic returns
Nelisiwe MasangoUbuntu Invest (Pty) Ltd – FSP 51420Operating on WhatsApp, claiming to be representatives of Ubuntu Invest (Pty) Ltd and promising unrealistic returns
Sygnia TradingThe Sygnia Group: Sygnia Asset Management (Pty) Ltd, Sygnia Financial Services (Pty) Ltd, Sygnia Life Limited and Sygnia Securities (Pty) LtdSoliciting investments from members of the public using WhatsApp and Telegram and promising unrealistic returns. The impersonators use the branding material of the Sygnia Group and images of its CEO, Magda Wierzycka
Pepperstone TradingA foreign-based and regulated entity called Pepperstone GroupThe impersonators use Telegram and fraudulently use the logo and branding of Pepperstone Group
Benchmark Corp (Pty) LtdReturn on Investment Brokers CC trading as Multiplan Risk ConsultantsImpersonators use WhatsApp and its Facebook page (Benchmark SA) to solicit investments by promising unrealistic returns and use Multiplan Risk Consultants’ FSP number and FSP certificate.
Skyaccess LoanAccess Bank South Africa Limited – FSP number 5865Using the FSP number of Access Bank South Africa Limited
Emily Paxhia and Benzinga Trading PlatformUnum Capital (Pty) Ltd – FSP 564Misrepresenting themselves to be a juristic representative of Unum Capital (Pty) Ltd (FSP 564)
Sandile KhambulaArgon Asset Management (Pty) LtdTargeting members of the public on WhatsApp to solicit investments by promising unrealistic returns
VoxitradeQuartz Infrastructure Partners (Pty) Ltd – FSP 47931 Rencell Fund II Limited -FSP 50359 Brough Capital (Pty) Ltd -FSP 884Soliciting investments on its website promising unrealistic returns
AlphacapitalanalysisproForextime Ltd – FSP 466614The entity solicits investments from members of the public and undertakes to generate returns of 35% to 85% depending on the amount invested
Efficient Wealth InvestRudi Barnard – a director of Efficient Financial Services (Pty) Ltd, a licensed Financial Services Provider – FSP 655Operates on Telegram, promising unrealistic returns
Unknown impersonatorsThe Public Investment Corporation SOC Limited (PIC) Financial Services Provider number 49754 allocated to Silver Leaf (Pty) LtdConducting business on WhatsApp using the FSP number 49754 that belongs to Silver Leaf (Pty) Ltd – not to the impersonators
Banca Financial ServicesBarko Financial Services (Pty) Ltd -FSP 45614Fraudulently utilising Barko’s company information

ALSO READ: How to avoid becoming a victim of online trading scams

How to ensure you deal with the real company and not scammers

The FSCA says consumers should always check:

  • that an entity or individual is authorised by the FSCA to provide financial products and services, including giving recommendations about how to invest
  • the category of advice the person is registered to provide, as there are instances where companies or people are registered to provide basic advice for low-risk products and then offer advice on far more complex and risky products
  • that the FSP number used matches the name of the FSP on the FSCA database. You can check here.

Consumers can also call the FSCA on its toll-free number at 0800 110 443 or do an online search for authorised financial institutions by license category here.

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