Cyprus financial regulator CySEC has issued a warning (see full text below) that a website hosted in India is set up as an imposter (or, if you prefer a different but also correct spelling, impostor) of its own main site.

The imposter website, cysecgov.com, is a scam which for whatever reason is only showing CySEC news bulletins through to October 2020.

This isn’t the first time that CySEC has had to deal with imposters or impersonators. We reported last year that individuals claiming to be CySEC officers or appointed representatives were soliciting investors for fees, in exchange for settlement of bogus compensation claims related to conduct of business with a number of firms under CySEC’s supervision.

But, this seems to be the first time that someone went to all the trouble of actually copy-catting CySEC’s website.

The full announcement released today by CySEC on the matter follows:

Imposter Website in India posing as real CySEC Website

12 August 2021

CySEC urges the public to careful and vigilant

NICOSIA – The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (‘CySEC’) would like to draw the attention of the public to the fact that, its website has been copied illegally by another website hosted by a company based in India, resembling that of the real CySEC website.

The CySEC’s main website address is https://www.cysec.gov.cy while the illegal website that copies CySEC is https://cysecgov.com/. This website is a scam and not associated with CySEC. Another distinction is that all the announcements on the website that illegally copies that of CySEC are only until October 2020. The real CySEC website has announcements up until this month, August 2021.

Therefore, the public is urged to be very careful and to make sure that it is linked to the official CySEC website, especially in case of payments that need to be made for exams or other purposes through JCC, as well as for licensed entities under the supervision of CySEC.

CySEC is taking all the appropriate actions for the safeguard its legitimate interests.