In a fraudulent offer of portfolio management, the victims are contacted by phone by a salesperson who offers them portfolio management contracts, (savings) accounts or alternative investment products (rare earths, gold, precious metals, etc.) with the promise of far higher returns than those on the market, often even promising a guarantee.
Behind these attractive offers, there are often fraudsters who are not authorized to make such offers and whose sole aim is to steal the money that their victims have entrusted to them. The fraudsters may also approach their victims via appealing advertisements published on social media or via websites.
Do you suspect that the offer being made to you may be fraudulent?
Have you been the victim of investment or credit fraud and you don’t know what to do?
If so, please contact the FSMA directly.
Don’t fall into the trap, follow our recommendations!
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Always check the identity of the person or company contacting you (have you checked the name, registered office, home country, contact details and whether it holds an authorization to make you this type of offer?).
If you cannot clearly establish the company’s identity, it should not be trusted. If the company is based outside the European Union, you should be aware of the difficulty of legal recourse in the event of a dispute.
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Be wary as well of ‘cloned firms’.
These are companies that pass themselves off as different, lawful companies even though they in fact have no connection with the latter. A close look at the email addresses or contact details for the companies in question may prove useful in order to detect potential fraud of this sort. -
Always ask the person contacting you to provide clear and comprehensible information.
Never invest if you do not understand precisely what is being offered. Be sure always to verify the information you are given.
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Be wary, too, if the company or its website is fairly new.
This is often the case with such cryptocurrency platforms, which are generally less than a year old.
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Be wary of any requests to transfer money to a bank account in a country that is different from the one where the company’s registered office is located.
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Lastly, be wary of (promises of) disproportionate returns.
If a return seems too good to be true, it usually is.