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The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) today warned the public of suspicious investment products named “Eternity.inc forex packages” (Products) (Note 1) offered by Eternity Prime Limited (Eternity) (Note 2).
The Products have not been authorised by the SFC for offering to the Hong Kong public and are suspected to have breached the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO) (Notes 3 and 4). The SFC also noted that the Products claim to have very high annual returns of 36-84%.
The SFC posted the Products and their related information on its Suspicious Investment Products Alert List on 12 January 2024.
The SFC warns the public against investing in any non-SFC authorised investment products. As these products are not regulated by the SFC, their investors have no or very limited protection and may lose all their investments. The SFC once again reminds the public to be cautious and skeptical about “too-good-to-be-true” investment opportunities, and to stay vigilant when making investment decisions.
The SFC will take all appropriate actions where there is any breach of the law.
Notes:
- There are four packages under the Products, namely (i) Basic, (ii) Business, (iii) Premium and (iv) Pro/Professional packages.
- Eternity is a Hong Kong-incorporated company and operates at the website of https://eternity.inc/. A search of the website on Scameter (https://cyberdefender.hk/en-us/scameter/), a one-stop scam and pitfall search engine supported by the Hong Kong Police Force, indicates that possible cyber security risks exist.
- The Products display characteristics of a collective investment scheme (CIS) as defined in section 1 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the SFO. It is an offence under section 103 of the SFO for a person to issue, whether in Hong Kong or elsewhere, an advertisement, invitation or document which is or contains an invitation to the Hong Kong public to acquire an interest in or participate in a CIS, unless the SFC has authorised the issue or an exemption applies. In general, CIS must be sold by an intermediary licensed by or registered with the SFC. Unauthorised CIS may generally be sold to professional investors only.
- It is an offence under section 114 of the SFO for a person to carry on, or hold himself out as carrying on, a business in a regulated activity (which will include promoting interests in a CIS) without a licence where required. It is also an offence under section 115 of the SFO for a person to actively market, whether in Hong Kong or from a place outside Hong Kong, to the Hong Kong public any services that the person provides and such services, if provided in Hong Kong, would constitute a regulated activity.
