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This spam scam is a fake from Santander in the UK

In his blog (here), Nigel Morris-Cotterill talks of chickens coming home to roost, a lack of attention by regulators too anxious to become FinTech hubs and the constraints on prudential management of FinTechs operating across borders, especially under the EU's central regulatory regime.

Sometimes, one has to shake one's head in wonder. on 23rd October 2017, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority issued a notice about what it calls a "cloned firm." It's not a firm, it's a company. It would be really helpful if regulators used language more precisely. Anyway, it was this "Century Finance/Century Finance Services Limited/ Century Finance UK Limited."

The idiot that's running the scam has just sent to me - me, of all people - his pitch.

A spam appearing using the name of Santander links to a fake website.

This morning's crop of overnight spam that made it through the preliminary filters arrived via a contact form relating to this very site. Ordinarily, form spams are either destroyed or reported on, partly because, even using bots, the scams that get through the anti-spam systems on the forms are a cut above the junk that comes in by mail and, often, present new - or at least new to us - threats. This one is carefully crafted, almost as if it's been revised several times to get it right. And, if it were to hit its intended target - investment businesses - it would at least cause a costly waste of time. But only time because, good as it is, it suffers from a significant flaw.

In a congressional hearing in 1987, US Congressman Norman F Lent of New York put it to the Chairman of the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission, John SR Shad that Rudolph William Louis ("Rudy") Giuliani, then the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, had a better public relations office than the SEC, it appearing that it was his office that had done all the work in the insider dealing case centred around Boesky, Milken, Levine and Drexel, Burnham, Lambert. Shad's explanation of the relationship which holds good today.

As Elon Musk, the increasingly mad genius who's not exactly loved after a court accepted his ridiculous defence in the "pedo man" case and who's the poster-boy for how not to communicate about your company in social media puts his foot so far in his own mouth he could kick a football through his.. oh, never mind. He's done it again and tanked the value of Tesla. In doing so, he's lifted his profile enough for pump and dump artists to be using his interest in the current great scam, Artificial Intelligence, and the con artists who manipulate shares are all over his "Quantum AI."

What is it with Hong Kong and its banks? The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has just announced yet another one is the victim of a passing-off campaign by internet fraudsters. It's the third this week and it's only Thursday.

And then there's this "In view of the latest situation of COVID-19, the HKMA hotline and Coin Cart services are temporarily suspended. The HKMA Information Centre is also temporarily closed to the public. Please visit the HKMA website/official Facebook page for details or latest updates:

Hotline services: HKMA website
Coin Cart services: HKMA website / official Facebook page
HKMA Information Centre: HKMA website"

A spam purporting to be for "Richard White" a customer of the Main Savings Federal Credit Union has arrived. It tells him that he has collected more than 15,000 "CURewards points". And it wants him to log into a website for one of several different options.

Société Générale Securities Australia is subject to criminal charges brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

SocGenSecAus? If you think that's silly, the acronym used by ASIC is worse: "SGSAPL". We'll just stick wiith "SocGen Securities".

Mark Damion Kawecki, of Frankston Victoria, Australia has appeared before the Melbourne Magistrates' Court and pleaded guilty in the first case of its kind in Australia. He fiddled the figures to help a company get on the board.

If you are a fan of Alan Greenspan, look away now. That's what he did when the first shoots of the housing bubble were evidenced - and then said he wouldn't have known anyway because the data at the US Fed was too recent. Except that it wasn't - it was simply parochial. The data was there - the Fed didn't think about it. And now, here is is again.

It's there. In plain sight. In the body of the press release from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. It's a statement that ASIC, having been found, damned by its own words and those of the industry, wanting in its supervision of the Financial Services Landscape, is taking the gloves off. It's not going to stand for any more poor compliance. It's going to make "ongoing efforts to improve standards across the financial services industry." So this case is going to be spectacular, isn't it?

Wells Fargo & Co and its subsidiary Wells Fargo Bank, N.A, have escaped prosecution, at least for the time being, by agreeing to hand over USD3,000 million to various agencies and departments of the US Government. It all started when the company decided it needed more account holders. Normal banks advertise or put young people on the streets with flyers. Wells Fargo had a different and shorter route - it would just create accounts for people, even if they hadn't asked for them. And that's not the full extent of what the bank is paying.

The mail looks very real - but obviously isn't as this publication doesn't bank with Standard Chartered. But what arrived in one of our inboxes a few minutes ago is a very active threat.