Cyprus' financial market regulator has again warned against fraudsters impersonating its employees. This time, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) identified a fake account on Instagram with the username cysec_cy.

Fraudsters Offering Dispute Resolution Services

The Instagram account has more than 14,100 followers and fraudulently offers dispute resolution services to traders. While the account redirects to the genuine CySEC website with a mentioned web address, it cleverly mentions a fraudulent email while closely resembling the CySEC domain.

Ironically, the fake Instagram account also post on how to spot fraudulent financial services platforms.

"Through this Instagram account, persons fraudulently presenting themselves as CySEC Officers or representatives, who are soliciting investors for fees in exchange for allegedly settlement of bogus compensation claims related to firms under CySEC supervision," the regulatory warning stated.

Repeated Warning by CySEC

The latest warning came only a month after the Cyprus watchdog raised concerns against persons fraudulently presenting themselves as CySEC Officers or representatives. It also warned against the fraudulent impersonation of its website with very similar names.

While clones of regulated brokers are rampant, fraudsters are now also impersonating regulators to sophisticatedly target individual investors.

"CySEC never makes contact by telephone or sends unsolicited correspondence and does not request personal data, financial or otherwise," the regulator stated. "CySEC has no authority or jurisdiction to collect fees for any purpose from individual investors, nor does it have authority to appoint anyone to do so on its behalf," repeating that it "does not authorize, verify, monitor, or is in any way involved in class actions, compensation schemes, payments between natural or legal entities or any public or private agencies."

The regulator also urged everyone to check the authenticity of communication as it sends emails from domain addresses ending in gov.cy. However, fraudsters also coned to these domains with very close and unidentifiable variations.

"CySEC urges the public to remain vigilant regarding any unsolicited communication from CySEC, to refrain from giving money to anyone who claims any or all of the above, or similar," the regulator said.

The Cypriot regulator is also actively flagging the clones of legitimate brokers and other fraudulent financial services platforms. Apart from CySEC, its European counterparts in Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom are also publicly naming fraudulent websites.