Italy's financial market regulator, Consob, continues its crackdown against illegal trading platforms with the addition of four new names to its blacklist.

New Brokers on Consob's Blacklist

The newly added platforms are AMA Business Solutions Ltd (operating as SolidXM), Pelliron Universal Inc., Mortiz Ltd and FXALTA LTD (operating as FX Alta), and New Finance LLC and NEWFX Ltd. All of these platforms offer trading services with risky contracts for differences (CFDs) instruments.

Most of them are not regulated or incorporated in offshore jurisdictions. SoidXM does not even have any basic information about the company behind the platform on its website, making it an outright scam. Pelliron claims to be registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, with a UK phone number on its website, suggesting it targets traders mainly in the UK.

The company behind NewFX claims to be registered in Delaware, United States but does not look to hold any licenses, even from offshore jurisdictions. On the other hand, FX Alta claims to be regulated in Malaysia. Canada's Manitoba Securities Commission also warned against FX Alta earlier this month.

Italy Blocks Access to Illegal Platforms

With the addition of the latest four names, Consob is now blocking access to 879 platforms for operating illegally within its jurisdictions or being outright scams. Earlier this month, Consob added five names to this list.

Consob is the only financial market regulator in Europe with the authority to block the access of blacklisted websites at a domain level. It received those powers in June 2019 from the Italian legislators.

"Consob draws investors' attention to the importance of adopting the greatest diligence in order to make informed investment choices, adopting common sense behaviors, essential to safeguard their savings: these include, for websites that offer financial services, checking in advance that the operator with whom they are investing is authorized, and, for offers of financial products, that a prospectus has been published," the regulator stated.

Meanwhile, the Italian regulator is not alone in warning against illegal platforms. Its counterparts in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, and other European nations are also actively adding names to their warning lists.