Belgian Regulator's Warning: Scammers Impersonate FSMA's Employees to Commit Recovery Room Fraud

In a warning issued on 18 April, the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) alerted the public to recovery room fraud where the fraudsters impersonate the FSMA employees, and claim to help victims of investment fraud recover or unblock the money they lost and ask the victims for compensation or for the payment of a tax to the FSMA. 

The fraudsters also usurp the FSMA’s logo to engage in ‘phishing’, in an attempt to elicit personal or confidential information from consumers.

The fraudsters contact victims by telephone or email. They claim to be a staff member or director of the FSMA. In an attempt to lend credibility to their claim, they use the FSMA’s logo in their documents.

The fraudsters use the following email addresses, among others: info@fsmacontact.online, support@billingfsma.com, and support@fsma.co. Emails from these or similar addresses are fraudulent. 

The FSMA recommends not responding to such emails but deleting them. The emails do not come from the FSMA. The official email addresses of the FSMA always end with @fsma.be.

“Consumers who receive unsolicited emails must be extremely careful. Be sure not to respond to any requests to transfer money for (financial) services or products that the FSMA is said to offer, ” the FSMA stated.

“The FSMA is not a financial institution. It does not offer consumers any financial services or products. The FSMA is not competent to recover lost investments or to ask for payment for any such a service. Nor is it competent to demand payment for taxes. It will never contact investors in this regard. The FSMA will also never ask consumers to provide their financial information or to pay for any services,” the Belgian financial regulator added.