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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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.
| IMPERSONATOR | LEGITIMATE (AUTHORISED) FINANCIAL SERVICES PROVIDER | COMMENT |
| Exness MT4 trade | Exness ZA (Pty) Ltd – FSP 51024 | Uses Telegram to solicit investments by promising unrealistic returns |
| Latitude Revenue Investors and Daniel Delport | Latitude Wealth (Pty) Ltd – FSP 51086 | Operating on WhatsApp promising unrealistic returns |
| Nelisiwe Masango | Ubuntu Invest (Pty) Ltd – FSP 51420 | Operating on WhatsApp, claiming to be representatives of Ubuntu Invest (Pty) Ltd and promising unrealistic returns |
| Sygnia Trading | The Sygnia Group: Sygnia Asset Management (Pty) Ltd, Sygnia Financial Services (Pty) Ltd, Sygnia Life Limited and Sygnia Securities (Pty) Ltd | Soliciting 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 Trading | A foreign-based and regulated entity called Pepperstone Group | The impersonators use Telegram and fraudulently use the logo and branding of Pepperstone Group |
| Benchmark Corp (Pty) Ltd | Return on Investment Brokers CC trading as Multiplan Risk Consultants | Impersonators 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 Loan | Access Bank South Africa Limited – FSP number 5865 | Using the FSP number of Access Bank South Africa Limited |
| Emily Paxhia and Benzinga Trading Platform | Unum Capital (Pty) Ltd – FSP 564 | Misrepresenting themselves to be a juristic representative of Unum Capital (Pty) Ltd (FSP 564) |
| Sandile Khambula | Argon Asset Management (Pty) Ltd | Targeting members of the public on WhatsApp to solicit investments by promising unrealistic returns |
| Voxitrade | Quartz Infrastructure Partners (Pty) Ltd – FSP 47931 Rencell Fund II Limited -FSP 50359 Brough Capital (Pty) Ltd -FSP 884 | Soliciting investments on its website promising unrealistic returns |
| Alphacapitalanalysispro | Forextime Ltd – FSP 466614 | The entity solicits investments from members of the public and undertakes to generate returns of 35% to 85% depending on the amount invested |
| Efficient Wealth Invest | Rudi Barnard – a director of Efficient Financial Services (Pty) Ltd, a licensed Financial Services Provider – FSP 655 | Operates on Telegram, promising unrealistic returns |
| Unknown impersonators | The Public Investment Corporation SOC Limited (PIC) Financial Services Provider number 49754 allocated to Silver Leaf (Pty) Ltd | Conducting business on WhatsApp using the FSP number 49754 that belongs to Silver Leaf (Pty) Ltd – not to the impersonators |
| Banca Financial Services | Barko Financial Services (Pty) Ltd -FSP 45614 | Fraudulently utilising Barko’s company information |
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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.
