Cyber Criminals have been sending scam emails ensuring to be from the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) encouraging in the crypto assets investments, the news was reported by financial market platform FT Advisor on July 22.
The email which points towards FCA is entitled “Guaranteed chance to earn” along with the FCA and Bank of England logos and also consists of images of physical cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and XRP over the British Union Jack Flag.
The email indicates that this isn’t from FCA as the caption for the proceed button comes with the misspelled text “Click her.”
Dominic Thomas, who is the Founder of Solomon Independent Financial Advisors in London, alerted FCA of the potential scam on Twitter, informing that he had received email multiple times in the last few days.
The email says: “Bitcoin is still a long way off its peak price of $20,000, which it reached in 2017, but some cryptocurrency experts believe it could hit an even higher value by 2020.”
The FCA has also affirmed that it has no relation with the emails mentioned above. The agency also alerted people that it would never ask people to provide their bank account details. The FCA stated:
“The correspondence is likely to be linked to organized fraud and we strongly advise you not to respond to the criminals in any way. Look for signs that the email, letter or phone call may not be from us, such as it listing a mobile or overseas contact phone number, an email address from a Hotmail or Gmail account, or a foreign PO Box number.”
Previously in May 2019, FCA stated that the Crypto Investors in the UK lost more than $34 million because of crypto and forex scams occurred between 2018-19. During that time, FCA has considered a ban on the “high-risk derivative products linked to crypto assets,” along with the firm’s executive director Mark Steward saying:
“Scammers can be very convincing so always do your own research into any firm you are considering investing with, to make sure that they are the real deal.”
Lately, FCA declared that it will soon release a consultation paper on a potential ban on crypto derivatives like Bitcoin Futures and other crypto-related trading products.