Belgium’s FSMA Blacklists 21 Fraudulent Websites

The Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA), the financial regulatory agency of Belgium has updated its blacklist of fraudulent Crypto schemes and has made 21 additions, taking the total number of entries to 99. The agency also issued a warning and reminded investors to be extremely cautious before making any sort of directions to take part in seemingly suspicious virtual coin trading schemes.

They said,

“Swindlers may reach you in a number of different ways… The formulas vary: purchase of cryptocurrencies, savings accounts based on cryptocurrencies, management agreements, ICOs, etc.” the financial regulator explained in the cryptocurrency investment warning… Whatever the formula, the (false) promises are often the same: a very high rate of return, often around 8% per month (sometimes even more!); the possibility of withdrawing your money very easily and at any time (‘in a few clicks’); the funds deposited are guaranteed (often at 100%!), which means that even if the market collapses, you will recover at least your initial investment, which makes this a very safe type of investment.”

The blocked websites were,

However, 5 of the blacklisted sites, kryptonexlabs.com, cryptosafe.tech, parel-invest.com, save-coins.com, and tradabank.com. were not working as of 14:00 UTC, on Friday.

The other 16 were in working conditions, though some anomalies, characteristic of fraudulent websites were noticed in all of them.

Bk-coin.com cryptonetto.com, dca-finance.com, and positive-ad.com all had the identical structure, design and content, while Capital-traders.com, Iminage.com, lacentraledescryptomonnaies.com, trade-my-bitcoin.net, and kryptowize.com-coin.com, had static logos of international payment processors like Visa and Mastercard, which was not directing one to their website as is customary despite claiming that they provided them with service.

Capital-traders.com and finance-markets.com claim to be Android and iOS applications, though even they have static logos, which do to redirect to Google or Apple App stores.

A 3-5% minimum guaranteed monthly returns were being offered by Elos-patrimoine.com while cryptoallday.com targets investors with the “alternative investment approach” of hedging.

Afeau.com and investissement-crypto.com both support investment in Bitcoin (BTC) while London-exchange.net supports and allows the trade of several cryptos including Dash (DASH), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Zcash (ZEC), and Litecoin (LTC).

The last site to be blacklisted by FSMA was the crypto trading website, vip-brokers.com, on Friday, the site showed that it had changed its model and was now offering video on demand services.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.