Warning on Scams

Please be aware that fraudsters may pretend to be part of Interactive Brokers. These "Clone Firms Scams" involve fraudsters who hold themselves out as employees of regulated firms to give the impression they work for a genuine authorised firm.

This fraudulent activity may involve multiple scamming techniques, aimed at convincing consumers that they are dealing with a trustworthy financial institution. Often this involves using authorised firms’ logos, adopting names that resemble those of actual regulated entities, or even using the name and address of authorised persons of the real firm.

Consumers should be particularly wary of people cold calling them, marketing emails from emails that don’t use the firm’s real domain name (for IB, interactivebrokers.com or interactivebrokers.co.uk) , and interactions through social media platforms.

Clone firms often refer to great returns on different investments or offer access to loans or investment/bank accounts for an advance fee.

Protect Yourself

REMEMBER: If it is too good to be true, it probably is!

If you are offered financial services or products by a firm, you should always take the following steps:

• Verify the details of the firm on its local regulator’s website. For UK firms, you can do this on https://register.fca.org.uk/s/ for the UK Financial Conduct Authority. Links to the other European regulatory websites are available at this link: https://www.esma.europa.eu/about-esma/governance/board-supervisors-and-ncas.
• Beware that scammers may point you to the real firm’s genuine website but use different details for their communications with you. You should use the information you found on the NCAs' websites to contact the firm.

If you are contacted by someone claiming to work for IBKR, please note:

• IBKR does not cold call consumers to offer services or products.
• You can contact IBKR to verify the information or to report your concerns from this page: Client Services
• You can browse IBKR’s website to check what products and services we offer: interactivebrokers.co.uk
• IBKR is regulated in Europe by the following entities:
• Financial Conduct Authority, in the United Kingdom: https://www.fca.org.uk
• Central Bank of Ireland, in Ireland: https://www.centralbank.ie
• Central Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank), in Hungary: https://www.mnb.hu/web/fooldal

Identified IBKR Clones

An example of individuals operating as Clone Firms of IBKR is provided at the link below:

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/warnings/interactive-brokers-clone-fca-authorised-firm