Following its consumer report of December 3, 2020, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) now makes it clear on January 18, 2021 that the activity as “asset manager” is not used by HTG Consulting GmbH, but by unknown third parties. HTG Consulting GmbH became victim of identity theft.

On December 3, 2020, BaFin reported, among other things, that HTG Consulting GmbH was promoting to work as a “trust manager” or “end customer manager” or “support employee in asset management” or “asset manager”, make their private account available in order to accept and forward payments on instructions.

With such “business models”, the fiduciary managers risk that the funds transferred to their accounts come from criminal, in particular fraudulent, activities. If you accept the job offer as a financial agent, there are serious consequences under civil and criminal law. The activity as a financial agent can also be prosecuted by the BaFin. Insofar as the companies claim that they have reported the accounts to BaFin as “trust accounts” or “asset accounts”, BaFin makes it clear that there is no such procedure for reporting trust accounts.

The clarification by BaFin shows that the Federal Agency cannot effectively act as a rating agency that continuously provides consumers with an overview of serious, less serious or dubious offers. Professional fraudsters make use of various possibilities of deception. As a result – as happened here – BaFin must publish “warnings” against reputable companies, although in reality only the false doppelganger is meant.

In China such fraud is supposed to be put to an end by the social credit system. Social credit ratings are intended to make the reputation of market participants transparent and to differentiate between trustworthy and less trustworthy addresses. The implications for data protection and citizen control are far-reaching. Although the problems of dubious offers and identity theft to be solved are similar in Western countries, convincing responses from the West regarding the Chinese system are still pending.