Brokers Beware: FINRA Warns Member Firms of Impostor Site

Fraud continued to be a major challenge that broker-dealers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the "biggest potential problem" being phishing attacks, Bill Wollman, an executive vice president at FINRA and head of its office of Financial and Operational Risk Policy, said in May.

In Regulatory Notice 20-12, issued May 4, FINRA warned of "a widespread, ongoing phishing campaign that involved fraudulent emails" that claim to be from FINRA officers. The emails had a source domain name "@broker-finra.org" and requested immediate attention to an attachment relating to a broker-dealer firm. The domain of broker-finra.org was not connected to FINRA and firms should delete all emails originating from this domain name, FINRA stated at the time.

FINRA has now requested that the Internet domain registrar suspend services for "finnra.org," it said in its Aug. 12 notice.

FINRA also reminded firms to "verify the legitimacy of any suspicious email prior to responding to it, opening any attachments or clicking on any embedded links."

For more information, firms were told to review the resources provided on FINRA's Cybersecurity Topic Page, including the Phishing section of its Report on Cybersecurity Practices – 2018.

— Related on ThinkAdvisor:

• FINRA: Fraud Continues to Be Major Challenge During Pandemic
• FINRA Warns of Email Phishing Scam