This Friday the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) released a new set of firms that it says have been doing business in France without the requisite regulatory approval.
The French regulator posted a list of nine different companies on its warning page, four of which are involved in cryptocurrency, another four in wine dealing and the last in diamonds.
Most of our readers will be familiar with the age-old cryptocurrency and diamond scams.
The former encourages users to open ‘trading accounts’ that can be used to buy and sell Cryptocurrencies .
Of course, in most cases, the user simply deposits money and then finds they can never withdraw it again. If they are able to contact anyone at the company, they will usually be told they have to deposit more money before they can withdraw any.
The diamond scam works in a very similar way. Users are told that they are investing in precious stones, but they won't see them physically because the company is holding onto them for ‘safekeeping.’
Again, the stones are never bought, and the scammers end up just running off with your cash.
AMF Cracks Down on Greenland's Wine Supply
The wine scam is new to this author but, though the product on offer is different, the scammers’ system remains the same; buy this wine, you’ll be a millionaire. Just deposit loads of your money first, and we’ll invest it for you.
One company says that it has seven offices spread across the globe. One of those appears to be, no I am not joking, in Greenland. Remember that great wine you had from Greenland? I certainly do. It tastes like Vikings, whale fat, and ice.
Anyway, all of these wine sites have the typical traits of investment scam companies: fake addresses, phony offices, and bogus products. It is, to quote, Lao Yang, all so tiresome. One can only hope that these companies disappear, but their ubiquity makes that an unlikely prospect for the near future.
