The Financial Conduct Authority added nineteen warnings in two working days this week. At 10:15 on Thursday 27 August, four unauthorised-firm entries under business names: YieldVertex, Cryptonaut Space / BloxxFX, SMART SELECT ONLINE TRADE and GLEAM-CAPEX. At 11:00 the same morning, thirteen more of the same class, this time social-media handles: five branded to foreign exchange or gold on their face — @Metatrader_4off, @jessicafxgold, @AiJokerFX, @NexatradexGold1, @Goldtraderhakah — and the regulator lists a Telegram account for twelve of the thirteen, several branded the same way. At 13:35, a clone entry for mastertrdlmt.com; at 16:50 on Friday, a second, reclaim-experts.com.
The standard wording on the handle entries is that the firm “is not authorised by us and may be targeting people in the UK” — a statement about permission and no more: not a conviction, and not a finding of fraud. The consequence: no access to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and no Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection — a scheme that answers for a firm’s failure, never for a position that moved against the client.
Clone entries take a different shape, and the mastertrdlmt.com warning shows it. The fraudsters, per the regulator, use a Regent Street address in London with their own telephone number and website. The page then names the genuine firm whose identity is being borrowed — Master Trading Limited, Firm Reference Number 990287 — and states that it “has no connection with the clone firm”. A real firm reference number in an email proves nothing: it is what a clone borrows. Cloning, as this desk’s earlier survey had it, is a persistent feature of the terrain, not an event within it.
Three records, then, doing three jobs. The Register records what an authorised firm may do. An unauthorised-firm warning records the regulator’s belief that somebody operates without it. A clone warning records a genuine firm’s details being worn by somebody else. The last two are both Warning List entries; only the Register records anything granted. The warning pages direct consumers to the FCA Firm Checker, not the Register, and that tool’s own page is candid: it “can’t confirm whether Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) or Financial Ombudsman Service protection will definitely apply”. The fuller document remains the Register.
The list is a snapshot: entries carry a publication date, may be amended or withdrawn, and none of the thirteen handles was on it on Wednesday. Anyone approached should search the current Warning List, then reply only on the contact details the Firm Checker supplies — never the ones the approach arrived with. The regulator instructs both on every one of these pages. The Register check, for whatever name the approach carried, is this desk’s own addition.
The usual footing: spread bets and CFDs carry a substantial risk of loss, and absence from the Warning List is not a recommendation — it is merely an absence.