FCA Warns Investors of a Potential Crypto Scam, Site Goes Down
- All companies providing financial services in the UK have to be authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority.
- The content on the Pro-Options website contained grammar and spelling errors, with some parts being rather comical.
Financial Conduct Authority headquarters in International Quarter London in Stratford East London. Alarmy
The financial regulatory body in the United Kingdom published a warning that Bitcoin investment opportunities offered by Pro-Options may be actually a well-elaborated scam. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) advised users to refrain from investing through this organization.
A few days after the warning, the site of the company became unavailable. At press time, it still is.
As stated in the FCA’s announcement:
“We believe this firm has been providing financial services or products in the UK without our authorisation.“
A closer examination of the Pro-Options website showed that its featured written content is full of grammar and spelling errors. It was also identified that some praise comments from excited investors were actually written by companies well known from popular Hollywood movies, e.g., OsCorp, known from the Spider-Man Marvel universe, and Skynet, famous from the Terminator movies.
The FCA bulletin gave more information on the potential risk:
“Almost all firms and individuals offering, promoting or selling financial services or products in the UK have to be authorised by us. However, some firms act without our authorisation and some knowingly run investment scams. This firm is not authorised by us and is targeting people in the UK. Based upon information we hold, we believe it is carrying on regulated activities which require authorisation.”
As of press time, and since the site went down, we have not been able to find any info indicating that the scam website managed to defraud anyone.
- Karl Greenwood, co-founder of the OneCoin crypto pyramid scheme, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and ordered to pay back the $300 million he made in commissions.
- Greenwood was the “global master distributor and the leader of the MLM (multi-level marketing) network” during his time in OneCoin, earning him 5% of all monthly sales.
Photo by Shutterstock
- Faruk Özer and his two siblings were sentenced to 11,196 years in prison for their involvement in the $2 billion rug pull of Turkish crypto exchange Thodex in 2021.
- Özer fled the country after the collapse of the exchange, but was detained in Albania a year later, and extradited back to Türkiye in April 2023 where he faced seven criminal charges.
- A cyber security incident at bankruptcy service provider Kroll has resulted in the exposure of “non-sensitive” customer data for claimants involved in the FTX and BlockFi cases.
- Both companies confirmed that account passwords, systems, and funds remained safe, but warned customers to be on the lookout for phishing scams.