Suspicious entities: Cayman Islands Monetary Authority list

The entities are neither registered nor licensed to undertake activities regulated by the CIMA. The notice also states that none of the entities are registered with the Cayman Islands Companies Registry.

These entities or persons representing them may be operating in the Cayman Islands, offering banking or other financial services to individuals, businesses or financial institutions located in other jurisdictions. They may be breaching provisions of the Banks and Trust Companies Law (revised 2003) or other regulations issued by the Cayman Islands government.

These entities may also be conducting or facilitating unauthorised financial transactions in other jurisdictions. Any proposed transactions involving these entities should be viewed with extreme caution. CIMA says "The Authority would encourage people receiving any form of approach from these purported entities not to respond to them in any way."

CIMA nquiries also reveal that they are also not registered with the Cayman Islands Companies Registry.

The list - running to eight pages (pdf) - can be accessed at http://www.cimoney.com.ky/enforcement/info_alerts.aspx?id=168.

Names include bastardisations of the names of real businesses including

(fake names:)

AIG Private Banking with false website aigprivatebankingonline.com

Banco de Paribas with false website bancodepar.com

Banco Sociedad General de Credito with false website bseich.com

Cayman National with false website cayman-national.com. This is especially insidious because there is an authorised institution called Cayman National Corporation of which there are several authorised subsidiaries the names of which all begin "Cayman National...")

Citi Finance Corporation - citifinancecorp.com

Citi Trust Bank (citrb-online.com) - not the same as CitiTrust (Cayman) Limited - which is authorised.

City Trust Bank Corporation - cititrustoffshore.net . Again, not the same as CitiTrust (Cayman) Limited - which is authorised.

FortisFinance Bank / Fortune Trust Finance and Securities - fortisfinance.com - not related to Fortis Bank (Cayman) Limited which is authorised

First Cayman Bank - firstcyb.com / firstcaymanbank.com / firstcaymanbanklimited.com - not related to First Cayman Bank Ltd which was liquidated in 1997.

The names of many other established international businesses have been abused in similar ways. There are also many entities which have names unrelated to obvious victims of passing off.