The Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) warns the public against fraudsters who claim to be employees of the FSMA.
These fraudsters claim that the FSMA can help victims of investment fraud to recover or unblock the money they lost. For this service, the fraudsters ask the victims for compensation or for the payment of a tax to the FSMA. This form of fraud is called recovery room fraud. The fraudsters also usurp the FSMA’s logo in order to engage in ‘phishing’, in an attempt to elicit personal or confidential information from consumers.
The fraudsters contact victims by telephone or email. They claim to be a staff member or director of the FSMA. In an attempt to lend credibility to their claim, they use the FSMA’s logo in their documents.
The FSMA will never contact you out of the blue or ask you to transfer money. Nor will it ever ask you for confidential information such as the PIN code of your bank card or a password.
The fraudsters use the following email addresses, among others: info@fsmacontact.online, support@billingfsma.com and support@fsma.co. Emails from these or similar addresses are fraudulent. Do not respond to such emails but delete them. The emails do not come from the FSMA. The official email addresses of the FSMA always end with @fsma.be.
Consumers who receive unsolicited emails must be extremely careful. Be sure not to respond to any requests to transfer money for (financial) services or products that the FSMA is said to offer.
The FSMA is not a financial institution. It does not offer consumers any financial services or products. The FSMA is not competent to recover lost investments or to ask for payment for any such a service. Nor is it competent to demand payment for taxes. It will never contact investors in this regard. The FSMA will also never ask consumers to provide their financial information or to pay for any services.