The United Kingdom financial markets watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), today warned that it believes a UK-based company under the name Bit Management Ltd has been providing financial services or products without regulatory permissions, according to a 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.

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The address details of the suspicious company are: 33 Throgmorton Street, 6th Floor, London EC2 N2BR, and it can be found under the web address www.bit-invest.com.

A visit to the aforementioned website reveals that it is just a HYIP program, a type of Ponzi scheme. High-Yield Investment Programs, or HYIP, are fraudulent investments that purport to deliver extraordinarily high returns on investment. As is the case with other Ponzi schemes, they pay previous investors with the money invested by new investors. Most of these scams work from anonymous offshore bases which make them hard to track down.

The FCA 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.

Last time Finance Magnates reported on the British watchdog was yesterday when senior MPs called for a review on breaking up the FCA because of its inadequate response to the near collapse of British lender HBOS in 2008.