CRFIN blacklists fraudsters

The new episode in the global war between regulators and fraudsters comes from Russia and it is indicative of the renewed attention that Russian authorities are paying into the field of online retail trading, as we have already reported on the discussions for changes to the regulatory framework that applies in the jurisdiction.

CRFIN, which stands for the Centre for Regulation in over the counter financial instruments, is not a governmental body but a non-profit, self-regulated partnership, which nevertheless plays a pivotal role in the monitoring of the FX market in the Russian financial industry. In fulfilling this role, CRFIN has detected a fraud and has thus issued a warning in order to warn potential investors and averting them from falling victims to a scheme that was set up to mislead and deceive them.

The fraudsters, which are identified as being a firm named Monolith-Invest and which appears to be operating from two different sites, namely http://monolith-invest.ru and http://personal-trader.ru were added to CRFIN’s blacklist, which features those entities that the regulator believes engage in activities that are contrary to the interest of investors. In this particular case, on both the sites mentioned above potential investors were misled because the sites contained promises of guaranteed return rates, as well as different compensation schemes for disseminating information about the company as well as for partners who generate new customers.

Judging that such claims were not only misleading but were in fact creating unrealistic expectations in the minds of investors in ways that were not transparent enough, CRFIN blacklisted the firm in question and warned potential retail investors that placing funds within this particular scheme carries an increased risk of loss of some or all of their investment amount.