OctaFX Warns Clients of Clone Websites Targeting Its Brand

OctaFX sounded alarm bells as the FX broker spotted several fraudulent schemes imitating their brand and even trying to extract money from their customers 'through deception'.

“If anybody happens to come across these impostors online, exercise extreme caution, since you could be convinced to put your money into fraudulent ploys, never seeing your funds ever again,” the CySEC CySEC The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) is a financial regulatory authority of Cyprus. CySEC is one of the key watchdog authorities for brokerages in Europe, whose financial regulations and operations comply with the European MiFID financial harmonization law.Founded in 2001, CySEC is instrumental in providing licensing and registration for forex brokers and previously binary options providers.CySEC is responsible for a variety of different functions, which includes the supervision The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) is a financial regulatory authority of Cyprus. CySEC is one of the key watchdog authorities for brokerages in Europe, whose financial regulations and operations comply with the European MiFID financial harmonization law.Founded in 2001, CySEC is instrumental in providing licensing and registration for forex brokers and previously binary options providers.CySEC is responsible for a variety of different functions, which includes the supervision Read this Term-regulated firm said.

As per usual, this seems like yet another instance of a scam operation where an unlicensed company illegally assumes the identity of an authorized company so that traders will mistake it for the legitimate entity.

OctaFX said its warning comes amid increasing concern over the prevalence of clone scams as criminals seek to take advantage of social confusion created by the Coronavirus Coronavirus The outbreak of Covid-19 or Coronavirus in early 2020 has since redefined the financial services industry. Brokers have been forced to quickly adapt to several changes, both positive and negative.This includes the FX industry, which saw surges in volumes across the retail and institutional space in Q1 2020. This trend can be explained by an outflow of volatility, coupled with countries taking major moves to stabilize their respective economies.In conjunction with uncertainty caused by the virus, The outbreak of Covid-19 or Coronavirus in early 2020 has since redefined the financial services industry. Brokers have been forced to quickly adapt to several changes, both positive and negative.This includes the FX industry, which saw surges in volumes across the retail and institutional space in Q1 2020. This trend can be explained by an outflow of volatility, coupled with countries taking major moves to stabilize their respective economies.In conjunction with uncertainty caused by the virus, Read this Term crisis.

The retail platform explains that the criminal gangs running these scams can engage with victims through a number of channels, including adverts on social media platforms and search engines. The most sophisticated criminals not only use a slight variant of company details but will even clone OctaFX’s website domain name.

“Always assume that scammers will use some type of our OctaFX brand name as a variation,” it advised clients.

Britons Lost £78m to Clone Firms in 2020

We already reported about that earlier this month when Malaysia’s financial regulator said a fraudulent clone platform had been posing as OctaFX. Although the firm is heavily regulated in Europe, such authorisations do not entail passporting rights to promote their products in Malaysia.

The broker warned that relying on the regulators alone was not enough in the battle against scams. As such, the financial industry as a whole has a role to expose copycat websites and to prevent investors from falling victim to them.

Most regulatory bodies post warnings about fraud and clone companies on its websites, with the number of relevant warnings issued by the FCA surpassing 1,100 in 2020.

Moreover, the FCA’s figures revealed that nearly £78 million was lost to ‘clone firm’ scams, where a fake company uses the details of a regulated business, in the same year. This figure was likely to be much lower than reality because many scams are not reported.

FX brokers are among those that have been targeted by rogue operators who clone their names and websites in an attempt to part unsuspecting investors from their cash.