Blocking investment and cryptocurrency scam websites

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12:00am, 24 August 2023

TLP Rating: Clear

Blocking investment and cryptocurrency scam websites

Along with others in the industry, CERT NZ has noticed many investment and cryptocurrency scam websites. Sometimes these are recommended to people from a search engine, from ads on social media, or via direct message on social platforms, including online dating.

With your help, we would like to prevent further losses by making it harder for people to access these sites and informing them about what these websites are doing.

What's happening

What this means

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) puts out warnings for sites to be wary of if you are planning to invest.

If your business can monitor for activity to these sites, block them, and notify those who visited of the FMA's warnings, we may be able to reduce both the financial loss, and harm caused in New Zealand.

What to do

Mitigation

Here are some key steps CERT NZ recommends to prevent further financial losses.

The FMA site contains further information and links about safely investing and what to do if you have been affected.

We believe that some of the easiest ways you might be able to restrict access to those domains include:

  • Protective DNS/DNS Filtering
  • EDR block lists
  • Web proxy block lists.

Further investment or cryptocurrency scam websites can sometimes be obtained by looking into what other sites are hosted on the same IP address (such as through passive DNS records). However, caution should be taken before acting on these to ensure legitimate traffic is not blocked.

At the time of posting the FMA are warning about the following websites due to their part in such activity:

CoinzHoldingLtd[.]com

AgroCuraLtd[.]com

Rapidtradereturn[.]com

Rapidtether[.]com

wpsmanage[.]com

Horizon-capital[.]ltd

Portaltradecapital[.]com

safe-trust[.]net

hsbcnz[.]com

wbroker[.]com

wilbysec[.]com

ratesfinder[.]co[.]nz

grampointclub[.]com

HoldingHeritageLimited[.]com

PSLUS[.]COM

capitalgoldinvestment[.]net

stakefunds[.]co

marketsradar[.]io

Rolvitrade[.]com

comparefixedtermdeposits[.]net

Bnpp-nz[.]com

bnpparibas-clientportal[.]com

bnpparibas-pc[.]com

Ariseinvslimited[.]com

accordinvestmentslimited[.]com

PTWealthManagement[.]com

PTWealthManagementLTD[.]com

hatchholding[.]net

quickpaylimited[.]com

DCMAtrading[.]com

soltechx[.]com

teamvalidus[.]com

sw-investment[.]com

magnitudefinancialgroup[.]co[.]nz

magnitudefinancial-nz[.]com

More information

If you believe you may have been caught up in one of these scams, contact your bank immediately using their official phone number or website.

Reporting the sites to CERT NZ can help us work to get them taken down. We can also pass the report to relevant agencies, such as Police and FMA to ensure a wider response.

If you require more information or further support, submit a report on our website or contact us on 0800 CERTNZ.

Report an incident to CERT NZ External Link

You can also report these directly to the FMA (Financial Markets Authority) to help them provide up to date alerts and warnings which in turn helps other New Zealanders.

Report an issue to the FMA External Link

For media enquiries, email our media desk at certmedia@cert.govt.nz or call on 021 854 384