The Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) warns the public against the activities of scammers who usurp the name and the logo of the FSMA and other financial supervisors to mislead consumers. This is a well-known fraud technique, for which ESMA also published a warning.
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. In some cases, the scammers even claim that fraud victims would have to pay a fine to the FSMA. This form of fraud is called recovery room fraud.
In particular, consumers are often contacted by Protectionline, a phantom company operating through the website https://protectionline.net/. This company contacts victims of investment fraud and claims it can help them recover lost funds. To this end, the victim must submit a claim for compensation to be supposedly approved by the FSMA. The victim is then redirected to websites that look exactly like the FSMA website: https://regulatory-legal.systems/, https://regulatory-payout.systems/ and https://regulatory-transfer.systems/. These websites are completely fake and have no connection with the FSMA. The URL of the FSMA’s official website is www.fsma.be.
The FSMA also noticed that its logo is sometimes added to fraudulent websites to give the impression that a given entity is authorized by the FSMA to offer financial services.
The scammers use the following websites and email addresses:
- datapotection@fsma-sup.cc
- fsma1@europe.com
- fsma@service-inf.com
- info@monetarydemands.site
- r.keppler@fsma-financial.com
- support@fsma-regulatory.net
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.
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.
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 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.