The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ), the United Kingdom’s financial regulatory body, today unmasked yet another fraudulent entity, this time bringing to light the Clone firm DMS Investment Management, according to an FCA statement.
Almost all firms and individuals offering, promoting or selling financial services or products in the UK have to be authorised by the FCA.
The FM London Summit is almost here. Register today!
The address details of the suspicious clone firm are: 1st Floor Riverside House, 21-23 City Quay, Dublin, which is itself a clone of the authorised firm address. The fraudulent entity can be found under the website www.dmsmanagement.eu.
DMS Investment Management is a common type of fraud known as ‘cloned firms’, which usurp the identity of an existing authorized entity in order to give the appearance of trustworthiness or legitimacy, and thereby to convince investors of its legitimacy.
In this case, the cloned firm embezzled the reference number 658053, which belongs to an established FCA-registered entity operates under the name DMS Investment Management Services (Europe) Limited.
A visit to the cloned firm’s website reveals its attempt to mislead investors that it is offering a legal product and claims to be governed by the FCA. The company made a series of materially false claims to lure investors including that it was founded in 1989 and manages approximately €34.17 billion in assets as of September 1, 2016, as well as having more than 1950 employees working across its offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Based on this, the watchdog stated in its official statement that it strongly advises investors to only deal with financial firms that are authorised, and check the Financial Services Register to ensure they are. It also noted that you should be aware that if you give money to an unauthorised firm, you will not be covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if things go wrong.
