The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has issued a warning that customers of WeLab Bank are the target of a phishing scam. WeLab prides itself on being Hong Kong's "only home grown virtual bank." But it's more than a bank so the scam has potentially much wider implications.
Blotics Ltd., a UK publisher, has agreed a settlement with US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission arising from the publication of articles about initial coin offerings. The articles were "accessible in the United States." But there's more and the case raises more questions than it answers.
It's the stuff that, if it's a TV or film plot, makes one want to shake one's head and wish that fiction writers would make things a little less far fetched; one feels that belief cannot be suspended when the concept is, well, so unbelievable. Prepare to shake your head again - this time asking why you thought it was so improbable because something that you would not believe is already old hat and the first conviction has just been recorded.
In the North West of China, in the district of Inner Mongolia, a small private bank started to get into trouble. The warning signs, with hindsight, were apparent but it's a kind of problem that, while common in Russia a couple of decades ago, is not usual in China. The results, however, are predictable for both financial and cultural reasons.
If you were going to launch a pump and dump spam-scam masquerading as legitimate share picks from a regulated stockbroker, you'd want to make sure your mail was at least opened, wouldn't you? So you'd layer one trigger word after another until you found the target's sweet spot and, all the while, you would have to avoid those pesky spam-filters. So you'd use current buzzwords so that the victim dare not ban them for fear of missing out. Want to see how it's done? PS: watch out for suspicious action on the US shares mentioned.
GoFundMe is a crowdfunding platform where people post requests for money for a variety of reasons. It's not Kickstarter which has a specific business model and relates solely to businesses wanting a little bit of help with the development of a product. Some of the things that appear on GoFundMe are brilliant. Some are, well, not. Here are some of the nots.
In an unusual case, an Australian who applied to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) for an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) was refused. He appealed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) which has upheld the decision. That, of itself, is uncommon but it's the grounds for refusal that turn it into a story.
But first some interesting information about information.
According to the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission, Khaled Khaled (male) is "a well-known celebrity music producer known as “DJ Khaled." So, that's the SEC marked out as fans, then.
And just to prove it, the SEC has done a deal following its favourite things "without admitting or denying the allegation" specifically expressed to be "pursuant to [the] Respondent's Offer of Settlement and are not binding on any other person or entity in this or any other proceeding." That means, no one who suffered loss can rely on the deal to support their case. Nice one, America.
It has come to our notice that one or more persons are fraudulently delivering e-mail purporting to come from BankingInsuranceSecurities.com. It is impossible for that mail to originate at that domain and you may safely blacklist it at server level. For more information, see below.
The fraud has interesting timing and holders of internet domains should be aware of a possible new threat to reputation. The threat does not, on the face of it, have any immediate cyber-security implications but there may be hidden dangers.
It all began when financial services regulation became trendy. In the good old days (which were in fact the bad old days in so many ways) language was used accurately. But some twit decided that precision in language in some way excluded hoi poloi. We are now some twenty years into a process by which imprecision has become the norm and therefore confusion and expense the inevitable result. One of the terms that first fell to this idiotic process is "firm."
The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the accounts of a foreign registered fund operated by two US residents.