Unauthorised financial activity: 30,000 euros entrusted to an acquaintance who "invested" with a foreign broker

Foreword: we are a law firm that deals exclusively with online scams. We have already handled this case, assisting a person who entrusted 30,000 euros to an acquaintance who said he was investing them with a foreign broker, and we can help anyone who has fallen into the same trap: if you want assistance, fill in the request form at the bottom of this article.

Unauthorised financial activity is almost always discussed in the plural and in the abstract: the platforms, the websites, the organisations. The case we handled shows that the most dangerous form is the other one, singular and concrete: a flesh-and-blood person, whom the victim knows, sees and still speaks to, who collects money from friends and acquaintances promising returns and claiming to operate through an account with a foreign broker. No site to block, no domain to report, no call centre. Just a personal relationship used as a guarantee.

Thirty thousand euros, and not even his own: a family member's. For about a year the counterpart "always gave something", never the agreed figure. Then, for three or four months, only excuses, "of every kind". When the family member asked for the capital back, the excuses multiplied. Today the injured party knows two things that make the case instructive for anyone: that his counterpart has no fixed abode and that, in his bank accounts, he "keeps absolutely nothing".

This article explains why such an affair is a serious offence, prosecutable ex officio even without any platform, why it must be carefully classified, and why time here, more than anywhere else, works against the victim.

What unauthorised financial activity is, and why one person is enough

Unauthorised financial activity is punished by art. 166 of the Italian Consolidated Law on Finance (Legislative Decree 58/1998), which penalises anyone who, without authorisation, performs investment services or activities, or offers away from business premises, or promotes or places at a distance, financial services or products.

The point almost nobody knows, and which is worth stating clearly, is this: unauthorised financial activity does not require a company, a website, a brand or a structure. It requires conduct. Whoever collects money from third parties with a promise to invest it and pay a return, without being entered in any professional register and without acting for an authorised intermediary, commits the offence the moment the first euro is received. It does not matter whether the investment was then actually made. It does not matter that returns were paid for a time. It does not matter that the parties know each other.

In the case we examined, the counterpart collected money from the injured party, from another young man in a different city and — by his own admission, as reported to the victim — "from other people", declaring that he paid it all into a trading account in his own name with a foreign broker, where he traded. This, technically, is managing other people's assets and collecting savings: reserved activities requiring authorisations our counterpart did not have and could not have had.

Alongside the offence under the Consolidated Law on Finance sits, where the collection carries an obligation to repay the capital, the unauthorised collection of savings from the public under art. 130 of the Italian Consolidated Banking Act (Legislative Decree 385/1993). It is a charge often overlooked in files of this kind, and one that frames the conduct correctly: not an investment gone wrong, but a reserved activity carried on without title.

Two practical consequences, both favourable to the injured party. First: unauthorised financial activity is prosecutable ex officio. It does not depend on a complaint, on the three-month deadline, or on the victim making up their mind. It is enough for the notice of offence to reach the prosecutor. Second: it is a charge that holds even when the fraud is hard to prove, because it does not require proof of the initial deception, only the absence of authorisation — a documentary fact, verifiable on the supervisory registers in minutes.

The instalments that keep the victim quiet: the most effective technique in unauthorised financial activity

What distinguishes this case from platform scams, and deserves the reader's attention, is partial payment.

For about a year the counterpart always paid "something", never the promised amount. It is a technique, not bad luck, and it is the same one that sustains pyramid schemes: returning a fraction keeps expectation alive, defuses reaction and, above all, continually pushes forward the moment at which the victim becomes convinced of having been defrauded. As long as an instalment arrives, the affair remains "an investment yielding less than expected". When the instalments stop, the victim already has months or years behind them.

The effect is twofold and its full extent must be understood.

Psychologically, the instalment does what kindness does in romance scams: it holds. The injured party put it to us in words worth more than any analysis: he always tried to keep the relationship civil because he knew that if he raised his voice the counterpart would go on the defensive and he would see nothing more. It is the implicit blackmail of every such case of unauthorised financial activity: whoever holds your money also dictates the tone of the conversation.

Legally, the instalment affects the complaint deadline. For non-aggravated fraud the deadline is three months from knowledge of the fact (art. 124 of the Criminal Code), and "knowledge of the fact" coincides neither with the first payment nor with the first delay: it coincides with the moment the person reasonably becomes aware of having been deceived. Partial payments push that moment forward, and the circumstance must be expressly argued in the document, with a chronology of the instalments and the promises. It is a step that decides the fate of the proceedings and cannot be improvised.

Fraud or misappropriation? The classification that changes everything

In cases of unauthorised financial activity between acquaintances, the criminal classification of the fact is not obvious and deserves more attention than it usually receives.

If the deception existed from the outset — if, that is, the person receiving the money never intended to invest it, and the prospect of investment was the artifice by which he obtained delivery — we are dealing with fraud under art. 640 of the Criminal Code: the inducement into error precedes and determines the act of disposing of the asset.

If instead the money was handed over for a specific purpose, and the intention to divert it arose afterwards, the offence is misappropriation under art. 646 of the Criminal Code: whoever, in order to procure an unjust profit for himself or others, appropriates another's money of which he has possession on any basis.

The distinction is not academic and has concrete effects on three fronts. First, the penalty and the aggravating circumstances. Second, the complaint deadline, which runs from different moments: in fraud, from when the deception is discovered; in misappropriation, from when the failure to return is known. Third, and above all, the evidential approach: in fraud the initial deception must be proved, which is not always easy when the parties know each other and some payments really did arrive at the start; in misappropriation it is enough to prove delivery for a purpose and failure to return.

The correct solution in a well-drafted document is not to choose: it is to plead both classifications in the alternative and let the prosecutor frame the fact, setting out the elements supporting each. To these is added unauthorised financial activity under art. 166, which — prosecutable ex officio — guarantees that the investigation starts in any event, and which is why in these cases a report should be filed even where doubts exist about the complaint deadline.

The money belonged to a family member: who is the injured party

One detail of the case has procedural consequences that are often ignored: the 30,000 euros did not belong to the person who handed them over, but to a family member.

This means the injured parties are potentially two, and their positions do not coincide. The original owner of the sums suffered the loss of assets and has a direct, autonomous interest in filing a complaint and joining as a civil party. The person who physically handed over the money suffered a loss of his own — pecuniary, if he undertook to repay the family member, and non-pecuniary, for the obvious distress such an affair produces within a family.

The operational recommendation is simple and should be followed: the complaint should be signed by both, and the document must make clear the provenance of the sums and the relationship between the two. Omitting this exposes the case to objections on standing that can needlessly complicate already difficult proceedings.

The check on the broker named: what we verified

The acquaintance indicated, as the place where the money was being put to work, his own account with a foreign broker, and had sent the injured party the link to the site on which he traded: the address fpmtrading.global.

We carried out the checks on 12 November 2026 and the results are these, reported for what they are.

The domain name fpmtrading.global appears registered on 6 November 2025 through a United States registrar, expiring on 6 November 2027; the record was last changed on 8 November 2026. The name servers belong to a content delivery network. At the date of our check, however, the domain does not resolve to any address: there is, today, no reachable site at that address. The historical web archive holds no copy of that domain, which indicates it never had a significant public presence.

As for the name, it recalls a brokerage group operating under non-European licences and using a different domain name. On this we are deliberately cautious, and we invite the reader to be equally so: we have no basis for asserting that the group had any role in these facts, and it would be wrong to attribute one. What matters, for present purposes, is a different set of considerations.

First: a link to a site is not proof that money arrived at that site. In cases of unauthorised financial activity the link to a platform performs the same function as a business card, making a representation concrete. Until the trading account statements are obtained, the claim "your money is there" is only a claim.

Second: even assuming an account really existed, an intermediary with only non-European licences is not authorised to provide investment services in Italy, and above all does not authorise whoever opens an account there to collect third parties' money. A private individual's personal account with a broker does not become a portfolio management service because that individual says it is.

Third, and most important: the injured party never had a contractual relationship with any broker. He handed money to a natural person. Every line of reasoning about recovery must start here.

Recovering from someone with nothing: strategy in a case of unauthorised financial activity

The victim told us lucidly what many discover too late: that his counterpart has no fixed abode and keeps nothing in his accounts. It is the situation that discourages most people from proceeding. It is also a situation to be read correctly, without illusions and without premature surrender.

First point: the responsible party's lack of assets is no obstacle to the criminal finding. The proceedings serve above all to crystallise the fact, and a final decision is a title that remains effective for years, usable if and when assets emerge.

Second point, the most relevant in practice: money collected does not stay in the account of whoever collects it. The route must be reconstructed beyond the first step, because the objective is not to attack the assets of someone who has none, but to find where the sums came to rest. This requires obtaining banking and trading records through the judicial authority: activity the injured party cannot perform alone and which must be requested specifically in the document.

Third point, often forgotten: unlike anonymous platforms, here the responsible party has a name. That is why this case, apparently poorer in documents, is procedurally more solid than many platform scams. An identified person can be investigated, questioned, searched and made subject to seizure; can be sued in civil proceedings; can be the target of a protective seizure securing the damages claim. In cases of unauthorised financial activity with an unknown perpetrator, none of this is possible.

Fourth point: the plurality of victims. The injured party knows at least one other person who handed money to the same individual. Separate complaints converging on the same name produce an effect a lone complaint never does: they make the serial nature evident, justify more incisive investigative requests and strengthen the case on intent. Reporting the existence of other injured parties, with what is known of them, is one of the most useful things that can be written in such a document.

On the assets side we refer to our study of confiscation by equivalent in online scams; on the civil side, to our analysis of recovery of undue payments, a remedy which, where money was handed over for a purpose never carried out, can usefully accompany criminal action.

Why the "remote" aggravating circumstance probably does not apply here

A technical clarification that distinguishes this case from the others we deal with and has concrete effects on prosecution.

The aggravating circumstance introduced by Law 90/2024 at no. 2-ter of the second paragraph of art. 640 of the Criminal Code concerns acts committed remotely through computer or telematic means capable of hindering identification of the perpetrator. It is the circumstance that, in platform scams, makes the offence prosecutable ex officio and which we have seen apply without difficulty in other cases analysed on this blog.

Here it probably does not arise: the perpetrator is personally known to the victim, has been seen socially, and is still reachable. There is no obstacle to identification, which is the premise of the provision. Which means that, for fraud alone, prosecution remains conditional on the complaint and its deadline.

It is precisely for this reason that framing the case as unauthorised financial activity is not a doctrinal exercise but the key to it: art. 166 is prosecutable ex officio and allows the judicial authority to be set in motion even if a discussion opens on the complaint deadline for fraud. Assessable on the facts are the aggravating circumstances of diminished defence (art. 61, no. 5) and of patrimonial damage of significant gravity (art. 61, no. 7), the latter beyond argument where thirty thousand euros are involved.

Frequently asked questions about unauthorised financial activity between private individuals

If I know the person and everything was agreed verbally, is it still an offence?

Yes. Unauthorised financial activity does not require a written contract, a website or a company: it requires that someone provide investment services or collect savings without authorisation. The absence of writing does not remove the offence; if anything it makes the chats, voice messages and transfer receipts more important, as they become proof of the relationship.

He paid part of it back: can I still report him?

Yes, and partial repayment cures nothing. The instalments are, on the contrary, an element to document, because they show the existence of the relationship and the awareness of the duty to repay. Keep the records and set them out chronologically in the document.

He has nothing in his name: is it worth proceeding?

Yes, for three reasons. The criminal finding does not depend on solvency. Money collected generally does not stop in the collector's account and must be followed beyond the first step. A final title remains effective for years. Proceeding costs little compared with what has been lost; not proceeding guarantees the worst outcome.

The money was my mother's: who should file the complaint?

Preferably both. The owner of the sums suffered the direct pecuniary loss; the person who physically handed them over has a position of his own to assert. The document must clarify the provenance of the money and the relationship between the two, to avoid objections on standing.

How do I check whether someone can manage my money?

You check beforehand, and you check positively: an authorised financial adviser is entered in the register kept by the sector's supervisory body, with a public, searchable registration number; an intermediary is entered in the supervisory authority's registers. Anyone who appears in no register cannot manage other people's money, however competent they seem and however long you have known them.

What to do if you entrusted money to an unauthorised intermediary

If you have handed sums to someone who promised to invest them, these are the steps we recommend, in order of urgency:

• stop paying and do not accept "one last payment" to unlock the rest: in unauthorised financial activity the last payment never exists;
• export and keep the full chats, voice messages and emails, in particular the promises of repayment and the excuses: they document the relationship and the mental element;
• line up the receipts for every outgoing transfer and every instalment received, with dates and amounts;
• send a formal demand for repayment, even by message, and keep the reply: it is the act that fixes the moment of default;
• check on the supervisory authorities' registers whether the person or company is authorised, and print the result of the search;
• do not sign agreements, private deeds or receipts proposed by the counterpart without having a lawyer read them;
• go to a lawyer at once: the three-month period for the complaint runs from when you understood you were not dealing with an investment;
• if you know other people in your situation, discuss it with your lawyer: complaints converging on the same person weigh far more than one alone.

How to recognise unauthorised financial activity before handing over money

The signals, in this affair, were legible from the start and are almost always the same:

• a person managing other people's money without being on any professional register and without acting for an authorised intermediary;
• a return promised at a fixed or near-fixed rate: guaranteed returns do not exist, and promising one is in itself unlawful;
• money handed to a natural person, into a personal account, rather than to a company into an account in its name;
• no written contract, no periodic reporting and no document attesting the operations carried out;
• a link to a platform displayed as proof that the investment exists;
• irregular instalments instead of payments on the agreed dates;
• money collected from other friends and acquaintances too, presented as a sign of reliability when it is the opposite;
• delay explained by bank blocks, checks in progress or imminent withdrawals: the standard excuses of unauthorised financial activity.

Unauthorised financial activity: the closing warning

The elements gathered lead to a conclusion we consider well founded: the affair we examined is not an investment gone wrong, it is a case of unauthorised financial activity accompanied by a taking of assets. Whoever collects the savings of friends and acquaintances promising returns, without any authorisation, commits an offence prosecutable ex officio the moment the money is received, and commits it even if some instalments really did arrive at the start.

Time, in these cases, is not neutral: the instalments serve to consume it, the excuses to stretch it, the complaint deadlines to punish its loss. If you entrusted money to someone who promised to invest it and today receive only postponements, the first thing to do is not to ask one more time: it is to have your case assessed. If you have suffered the same scam, we can help you.