A shocked chartered financial planner has been forced to consider a re-brand after discovering his firm's website has been fraudulently cloned.
The unauthorised website, calling itself Ariun Financial Group, has replicated FSA-authorised chartered financial firm Ariun Financial Consulting and has now been added to the regulator's extensive list of unauthorised firms.
Chris Bryans, managing director of chartered advice firm Ariun Financial Consulting, said: "There is nothing there can be done about this beyond the clone firm being added to the FSA's unauthorised list. I just cannot believe the lengths these fraudsters go to. It is just mad.
"Everything on the cloned website, including phone numbers disguised to look like Richmond numbers where we are based, replicating our logo and FSA register number, has just been replicated to every detail."
According to Who Is information, the website was created in the USA on 20 June 2012 and was last updated 23 July the same year.
The FSA published an alert statement yesterday that said: "We have published this statement today in order to warn investors against dealing with unauthorised firms.
"This statement is to advise members of the public that an organisation identifying itself to UK citizens as Ariun Financial Group not authorised under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 to carry on a regulated activity in the UK."
COVER called the clone firm, posing as a 26-year-old who had just inherited £70,000 and seeking financial advice.
The clone firm said it only dealt with persons over the age of 45 and suggested getting in touch instead with well-known large UK adviser firms Hargreaves Lansdown and Brewin Dolphin.
The clone firm then advised the money could be wisely invested into Apple or Nokia shares and warned to be careful of "many financial advisers who are out to take advantage of inexperienced young people with a lot of money".
Bryans said while an FSA alert had been published he still worried about fraudulent transactions that the clone firm would make using his firm's brand.
"As far as anything else we can do is concerned it seems it is really very little, bar consulting lawyers regarding intellectual property rights which is expensive and probably will not get anywhere," he said.
"I am seriously considering re-branding just to be sure that this will not be a problem for us in the future. I do not know what else to do."
The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) said it would re-register the firm for chartered status and enable it to use the CII chartered logo if it decided to re-brand, without incurring the usual fees involved.
A Blueprint spokesperson, of which the firm is a member, said: "It is the first I have encountered personally of this nature but that is not to say it does not goes on.
"We have notified the FSA and as far as we stand now there is not really anything more we can do about it. These cases are very difficult to sort out."
The FSA has previously warned that share fraudsters are increasingly cloning genuine authorised firms or individuals to appear more credible.
In 2011 there were 449 reports made about a number of cloned firms - almost three times as many as the year before when 161 reports were made to the FSA.
