The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) of New Zealand has publicized an official warning on its website, alerting investors of conducting business with “Securities and Acquisition Conduct Commission,” which tries to usurp the identity of the regulator itself to give the appearance of trustworthiness and legitimacy.
The financial watchdog today updated its warning list by blacklisting www.sacc-govt.org, which claims to be a New Zealand financial regulator. The FMA said that the Clone regulator impersonates the organization in many areas and context, as well as endorsing products and services from suspected scams, including a brokerage firm called Anahera and Partners.
In addition, the fake regulator’s website is listing a few names of FMA’s brokerage members, many of whom have contacted the agency to inquire about its legitimacy.
According to the warning, Anahera and Partners claim to be authorized to provide financial services in New Zealand. However, this is not true. Additionally, the FMA is concerned that the firm could be a scam after it received a report saying that Anahera cold-called a New Zealand investor, offering to buy securities at an inflated price and asking for the investor’s bank account details.
Based on this, the FMA warns the public not to invest with both entities and be cautious of dealing with their solicitations.
The FMA is focused on identifying and blacklisting any individual or entity that is operating in New Zealand without a license or authorization, where that is required by law. However, the FMA has warned that some companies are overseas operations and the watchdog may only be alerted to them once a local investor has a problem with them.
The FMA updates the public using warnings and alerts when it believes investors may be at risk. Businesses and individuals are named on this list if they are not registered to provide financial services in New Zealand, have had the FMA enforce action against them for misconduct, have either not responded or not offered a satisfactory response to a request for information, or have received a warning notice from the FMA.
