Suspicious crypto exchange alerts from Hong Kong regulators cause Futu Holdings to give impostor warnings
- The company said it has no affiliation with the alleged impostors and has reported them to police and filed a complaint with the SFC
- SFC alerts against the entities appeared on new lists the regulator published Friday, to help provide transparency on crypto regulation
A Hong Kong subsidiary of Futu Holdings, an online Chinese brokerage backed by Tencent Holdings, has warned that malicious sites are imitating its brand after three such alleged domains, claiming to be crypto exchanges, were flagged by the city’s chief financial regulator in the wake of the JPEX fraud investigation.
“[Futu Securities] has recently noticed a suspicious platform called ‘FUBT Exchange’ that impersonates the company by using Futu Securities’ logo, brand name, and imitating our website addresses” at futu-pro.com and futubit.com, a spokeswoman said in a statement to the South China Morning Post on Monday.
“Futu Securities has no affiliation with the mentioned platform and brand, and the related web pages are not operated by the company,” she said, adding that the company had reported the platforms to police and filed a complaint with Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).
Futu’s statement comes after the SFC provided a list of suspicious crypto platforms targeting investors in the city on Friday, including the alleged Futu impostors.
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The cryptocurrency scandal gripping Hong Kong
According to the list, the SFC first issued an alert against FUBT Exchange on September 22, noting the company purported to have a presence in Hong Kong and had provided a fake Hong Kong phone number.
In June, the SFC issued a separate alert about the websites futu-pro.com and futubit.com for suspicious activity, noting the sites were imitating Futu’s logo and claiming to be “the world’s leading blockchain digital asset trading platform”.
