France financial regulator Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) has issued a reminder to retail investors to be extremely vigilant regarding Immediate Connect’s fraudulent investment offer.
The AMF said that it is continuing to receive a large number of complaints from retail investors about this fraudulent automated trading offer on Forex or in crypto-assets, following the appearance of new “clone” websites. The AMF had already warned the public about Immediate Connect in June 2023, and then issued a joint warning with the Paris Public Prosecutor’s office on 17 November 2023.
Many retail investors have reported to the AMF that they saw this offer on the Internet or social networks, relayed by advertisements using famous names from a wide variety of sectors (company directors, TV journalists, comedians, singers, sports personalities, influencers, etc.) and well-known news websites, or in articles purporting to be sourced from major national daily newspapers. These articles reported on alleged interviews with celebrities on a television programme who had inadvertently revealed the source of their wealth and extolled the merits of this offer.
After filling in their details on an online contact form, the interested parties were quickly contacted by a supposed financial adviser who encouraged them to register on an unauthorised trading platform to invest in the foreign exchange market (Forex), in crypto-assets such as bitcoin, or in crypto-assets derivatives. But often, when they tried to collect their alleged gains, they were asked to first pay a “capital gains tax”.
The personal data collected by fraudsters can be circulated for a second fraudulent purpose: the refund scam. Investors who have already fallen victim to a scam are contacted by an unknown person who most often claims to be mandated by a public authority and to have recovered the lost funds. The scammer claims that these will be returned to the investor on payment of certain sums.
To date, the losses declared to the AMF in connection with this offer amount to several hundred thousand euros.
Some of these new fraudulent websites have already been added to the AMF blacklists. Others are being investigated.
Addresses added to AMF blacklists:
- graminator.net
- immediate-avage.co
- immediate-genesis.com
- immediate-momentum.com
- immediate-peak.com
- immediatebitwave.com
- immediateeuraxai.org
- immediategranimator.ai
- immediatneupro.ai
- sandiegobraincare.com/?_lp
- paulwchow.com/?_lp
