We have already handled this case. To reassure him they sent a photo of a passport: it was forged. But even if it had been genuine it would have proved nothing. If you have suffered the same scam, we can help you: fill in the form at the bottom of this page.
A premise: we are a law firm and we deal exclusively with online fraud and unauthorised financial activity. This article comes from a real case handled by the firm and is published in anonymous form as regards the injured party, for public interest purposes. The technical data come from checks on the public domain registries carried out on the date of publication. If you recognise yourself in what you read, you can submit your position to us using the form at the bottom of this page.
At a certain point, to prove he was a real person, the self-styled consultant sent the injured party a photograph of his passport.
It was passed on to us, and we checked it. It was false.
But the most important thing in this article is something else, and it is why it is worth reading to the end: even if that passport had been genuine, it would have proved absolutely nothing.
sepa.finance is a scam, our firm has already handled this case, and here we explain why an identity document is the wrong evidence — and what the right evidence is.
Why sepa.finance is a scam: a name that belongs to nobody
Let us start with the name of sepa.finance, because it is the main deception.
"SEPA" stands for the Single Euro Payments Area: a set of technical rules that make transfers and direct debits uniform within the European Union. It is a regulatory framework, not an entity. It is not a company, it has no customers, it holds no accounts, it manages no investments and it has no platforms. Nobody "invests with SEPA", because there is no SEPA to invest with.
Whoever uses that acronym as a brand is doing something precise: taking a word everybody associates with transfers, banks and Europe, and sticking it onto a domain of their own. The result sounds institutional and means nothing.
The same goes for the final extension: ".finance" certifies nothing. It is not reserved for authorised intermediaries, it requires no checks and it is bought like any other extension.
As to the registries, the sepa.finance domain is registered on 30 May 2025. That deserves attention, because the injured party's payments begin in 2023: two years before that name existed. It means that at the start of the affair the site was called something else, and that the name was changed along the way — exactly the domain replacement mechanism we have documented in dozens of other files.
As for the substantive checks, the picture is the usual one: no identifiable company, no VAT number, no registered office, no authorisation number referable to sepa.finance. Anyone collecting money presenting it as an investment must be authorised and entered in the relevant registers.
The passport: why it is the wrong evidence
Now the part that applies to everybody, not only to those who crossed paths with sepa.finance.
When an injured party of sepa.finance, or of any similar site, begins to have doubts, the request that comes to mind is almost always the same: "send me a document". And the fraudsters are only too ready to oblige — because they know that document closes the doubts instead of opening them.
There are three reasons why, in cases like sepa.finance, it is the wrong evidence.
First: nothing can be authenticated from a photograph. A document is verified through its security features, which a photograph or a scan does not reproduce. Anybody can build a convincing image, and very high-quality forged documents circulate online. In the sepa.finance case a professional check was enough to establish that the one sent was not genuine, but it is an examination an injured party cannot carry out alone.
Second: the document may belong to a real and innocent person. Stolen documents circulate and are reused. For this reason, if you receive such a document, do not publish it, do not share it and do not contact the person pictured: they may themselves be a victim. Keep it and hand it over only to the judicial authority.
Third, and this is decisive: a document proves an identity, not an authorisation. Even if that passport had been genuine, it would only have shown that a person with that name exists. Not that they are authorised to collect money, not that the company they claim to work for exists, not that the website is theirs.
The right question is never "who are you", but: are you authorised, and is this really your official address? It is checked on the supervisory authority's register, where both the intermediary's name and its website address are published. It is free and takes two minutes.
One last element, legally: making, possessing or using forged identification documents is a separate offence, provided for in particular by article 497-bis of the Italian criminal code for documents valid for travel abroad. The forged passport is therefore not only a confirmation of the fraud: it is an additional charge, and an element to be attached to the filing exactly as it was received, uncropped.
Three years of payments
In the sepa.finance file the payments run from 2023 to 2026, for a total of around forty thousand euro, made by transfers abroad.
A long affair like the sepa.finance one looks, at first sight, more compromised. It is not, and it is worth saying so precisely.
The path of the money paid to sepa.finance is the evidence that lasts longest. On bank relationships, article 119, paragraph 4, of the Italian Consolidated Banking Act gives the customer the right to obtain, at their own expense and within ninety days, a copy of the documentation relating to individual operations of the last ten years. It is not a courtesy from the bank: it is a right, exercised with a written request. An affair beginning in 2023 is comfortably inside that window, and the anti-money-laundering rules likewise require intermediaries to keep the data for ten years.
So the ordering parties, beneficiaries, IBANs, BICs, countries and payment references of every transfer — including those from 2023 — are still available and can be obtained.
The fact that contact is still active
There is an element that changes the priorities in the sepa.finance file: the injured party is still in contact with the structure, and the affair has moved into a new phase, made of pressure and demands for payment linked to an account supposedly opened in his name.
When contact is still live, the position is stronger, not weaker: the contact details are active today, the data exist, and some requests to the judicial authority only make sense while those channels still work.
With sepa.finance, as always, the rules are the usual four, to be followed in order: do not pay any more money under any label; do not block and do not delete before exporting everything in native format, with dates and times; note down every contact detail, because it is live investigative material; file at once, because a filing made while the channels are active allows enquiries that cannot be requested later.
The legal framework
Article 640 of the criminal code applies, with the aggravating circumstances of diminished defence under article 61 no. 5, recalled by article 640 paragraph 2 no. 2-bis, and of damage of particular seriousness under article 61 no. 7. For facts after July 2024 — and here the payments run to 2026 — article 640 paragraph 2-ter also applies, introduced by law 90/2024, which aggravates fraud committed remotely with computer tools capable of hindering identification of the perpetrator.
Also relevant are impersonation under article 494, possession and manufacture of forged identification documents under article 497-bis for the passport, unauthorised financial activity under article 166 of the Consolidated Law on Finance, prosecutable of the court's own motion, and, as regards the path of the funds, money laundering under article 648-bis, to be presented as third parties' conduct. For the phase of pressure and demands accompanied by threats, extortion under article 629 is relevant, including in attempted form.
The aggravating circumstances of the second paragraph of article 640 entail prosecution of the court's own motion: the passing of three months from learning of the facts does not bar the proceedings. But the payments run to 2026 and contact is active: there is no reason to wait.
What to secure immediately
Anyone who paid money to sepa.finance must obtain: the complete bank documentation in official form, citing article 119 paragraph 4 of the Consolidated Banking Act, outgoing and incoming, with ordering party, beneficiary, IBAN, BIC, country and payment reference for every operation from 2023 onwards; the native export of all conversations; the emails in complete original format, not photographed, because the technical headers are needed; the identity document received, in the exact form in which it arrived; the names, numbers and declared roles of each person spoken to; the exact addresses of all the sites used over the years, with dates; and the list of your own documents handed over.
And the warning that always applies: anyone who contacts you promising to recover the sums on advance payment is the second scam, built on the lists of the victims of the first.
Similar cases already handled by the firm
Anyone who crossed paths with sepa.finance will find useful our analysis of hmtreasurygovuk.com, the domain used in the later phase of the same affair; of eu-ecommbx.com and ecommbx.online, on an authorised institution's name used by third parties and on the fake authority letter; of manoab.com and mirabaudasset-management.com on clones of institutions; and of answer-blockchain.com on what remains of a case that began in 2023.
If you paid money to sepa.finance: what to do now
This is the picture. sepa.finance is a scam: a domain registered on 30 May 2025 — two years after the affair began — using as its brand the acronym of the single euro payments area, which is not a company and has no customers, and behind which there is neither an identifiable party nor any authorisation.
If they sent you an identity document to reassure you, keep it and hand it over: it may be an additional offence. But do not take it as a guarantee, because it is not one.
The only check that counts is made on the supervisory authority's register, and it concerns two things: whether that party is authorised, and whether the website address is the one published there.
Our firm has already handled this case. You can submit your position to us for a preliminary assessment.
If you have suffered the same scam, we can help you. Fill in the form you will find at the bottom of this page.
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