Following confirmation on Twitter that Crowd1 operates illegally in South Africa, the FSCA has now issued a formal statement.
According to the FSCA, South Africa’s top financial regulator, Crowd1
is neither an authorised Financial Service Provider (FSP), nor is it a representative of an authorised FSP.
There is also no record of this entity having applied for a license with the FSCA.
Being a passive investment opportunity, Crowd1’s MLM offering constitutes a security.
As above, Crowd1 is not registered to offer securities in South Africa and therefore operates illegally.
Indeed Crowd1 isn’t registered to offer securities in any jurisdiction. The company operates illegally the world over.
The FSCA advises
while it is true that all investments hold risk, one with an unauthorised FSP should be considered extremely high-risk.
It is also often fraudulent in nature, and likely to lead to losses for customers, for which there is little or no recourse.
Therefore, the FSCA urges the public to always be mindful of this whenever approached by an individual or entity offering an investment opportunity.
It is also important to remember that if it sounds too good to be true – it probably is.
Crowd1 is operates through Spanish shell companies. The Ponzi scheme is run by Swedish scammers Jonas Erik Werner and Johan Stael Von Holstein.
To date neither Swedish or Spanish authorities have taken any public action against Crowd1.