France regulator warns investors of Omega Pro, Businessempire.fr
France’s financial markets regulator alerted investors that scams related to Omega Pro Ltd are beginning to circulate, with the blacklisted firm capitalizing on the situation to run a range of “unrealistic” offers.
The Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR), which had already blacklisted www.omegapro.world in 2020, have added another site belonging to the same company, Businessempire.fr, which also offers Forex trading services without being authorised to do so.
The AMF, as part of its intensified market supervision, said the aforementioned company seems to be a fraudulent business, cautioning all retail investors about the risks of dealing with it. Specifically, Businessempire.fr website claims to offer Forex investment plans, with returns of more than 300% in 16 months, which raises a red flag as far as investors are concerned.
“The AMF reminds investors that the Forex market is a risky one where retail investors can suffer heavy financial losses, for example through leveraged derivatives such as contracts for difference (CFDs), speculative financial instruments that bet on the rise or fall of an index, share, currency pair, etc., without owning the underlying asset,” the watchdog said.
Stocks scams have also been put on notice
The AMF says it continues to receive reports of victims falling prey to scams offering to buy shares in listed companies through fraudulent platforms posing as regulated providers of “savings accounts”. It also advised members of the public to be wary of stock recommendations given on social media and messaging applications.
These are typically from overseas ‘brokers’ who target potential victims offering to sell what often turn out to be worthless or high risk shares. These callers can be very persistent and extremely persuasive, and their activities have resulted in considerable losses for some investors, the authorities said.
Another common scam is “pump and dump” schemes related to some penny stocks where fraudsters try to boost its price by sharing positive, but fake, information. In this case, they claim that a company managed to detect coronavirus cases or to develop a new cure to prevent the infection.
It is not just the novice investor that has been deceived in this way, the AMF says, as many of the victims have been successfully investing for several years. They are thus advised to be very wary of any unsolicited advice, offers to buy shares at a discount or offers of free company reports.
