LIVE Verified against 11 official registers
FCA Financial Services Register Companies House UK Sanctions List HMRC Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme HMRC money laundering penalties Information Commissioner's Office OpenFIGI Domain registries Certificate Transparency logs Mail and web records Ofcom numbering data
MetaAshes

RegTech-powered anti-fraud prevention assessment

Verify who you are investing with. Before you pay.

MetaAshes is a RegTech verification service: it cross-references any firm's claimed identity, regulatory status and payment instructions against 11 official UK public registers, including the FCA Register, Companies House, HMRC and the UK Sanctions List, then returns a documented, evidence-based verdict in minutes.

Verify a firm How it works
  • 58 fraud checks
  • 102 scoring rules
  • PDF evidence report
Verified against
  • FCA Financial Services Register
  • FCA Warning List
  • Companies House
  • UK Sanctions List
  • HMRC
  • Information Commissioner's Office
  • WHOIS domain registries
  • Certificate Transparency logs

The challenge

Investment fraud is now the UK's costliest payment scam.

Modern investment fraud is engineered to withstand scrutiny. Criminals impersonate authorised firms, borrow genuine regulatory credentials and operate convincing websites and trading platforms. The evidence that exposes them is rarely obvious, and seldom held in one place.

£221.5m lost to investment fraud in the UK in 2025 Up 40% year on year
14,893 investment fraud cases reported Up 26% year on year
£14,900 average loss per case Derived from UK Finance data
No. 1 largest source of authorised push payment losses Ahead of every other APP scam type

Source: UK Finance, Annual Fraud Report 2026, reporting on 2025.

Anatomy of a clone firm

  1. 1Fraudsters adopt the name and FCA reference number of a genuine, authorised firm.
  2. 2They attach their own website, email address and telephone number to that identity.
  3. 3An investor searches the name, finds a legitimate firm and is reassured.
  4. 4Funds are transferred to an account with no connection to the genuine firm.

The evidence is fragmented

The information needed to expose a fraudulent firm is spread across regulatory, corporate, tax and technical registers. Each is maintained independently, and none is cross-referenced against the others.

Identifying the contradictions between them demands direct data access, specialist knowledge and a rigorous, consistent method.

MetaAshes brings those records together and tests them against one another in a single, structured assessment.

Our solution

One assessment. Every relevant register. A verdict you can act on.

Provide the details the firm has given you. MetaAshes tests them against the official record, identifies every inconsistency and presents its findings in a clear, evidence-based report.

  1. 01

    Submit the firm's details

    A guided six-step questionnaire captures who the firm is, the credentials it has quoted, what it is offering and how it has asked to be paid. Alternatively, upload the firm's correspondence and the relevant details are extracted for your review.

  2. 02

    Independent cross-verification

    Each detail is verified in real time against 11 official and public data sources, then assessed against recognised patterns of investment fraud.

  3. 03

    Verdict and evidence report

    You receive a risk score from 0 to 100, a verdict of RISEN or BURNED, a plain-English explanation of every finding and clear next steps, in a downloadable report for your bank or Action Fraud.

Assessment pathway one

Regulated financial investments

Shares, bonds, funds, pensions, forex and CFDs, cryptoassets and automated trading services. As most investments marketed in the UK require FCA authorisation, this assessment is anchored in the Financial Services Register: whether the firm is authorised, whether its credentials are genuinely its own, and whether it is permitted to offer the product in question.

Assessment pathway two

Alternative and physical assets

Wine, whisky, gold, art, land and carbon credits. These markets largely sit outside FCA regulation, so the assessment draws on Companies House, HMRC and the Information Commissioner's Office, and examines what matters most for tangible assets: legal title, independent proof of existence and a credible route to resale.

What we protect against

Exposing the tactics behind modern investment fraud.

Each risk below corresponds to a live check within the MetaAshes engine.

Clone firms

Fraudsters trading under the identity and credentials of a genuine, authorised firm.

Fabricated credentials

Reference numbers and company numbers that are invalid, or that belong to another entity.

Unauthorised activity

Firms operating beyond the scope of their permissions, or in breach of regulatory restrictions.

FCA Warning List

Firms and websites the regulator has publicly identified as unauthorised or cloned.

Shell and phoenix companies

Companies with no genuine trading history, questionable directorships or a pattern of reinvention.

Fraudulent websites and email

Newly created websites and email addresses designed to imitate legitimate firms.

Payee mismatches

Payment instructions directing funds to an account not held in the firm's own name.

Advance fee demands

Fees, taxes or deposits demanded before an investor may withdraw their own funds.

Remote access fraud

Requests to install software that grants control of an investor's computer or phone.

Recovery room fraud

Follow-up approaches offering to recover earlier losses in return for an upfront fee.

Sanctioned parties

Firms, companies or directors subject to UK financial sanctions.

Unverifiable assets

Physical assets with no clear legal title, no independent proof of existence and no viable exit.

Our methodology

Rules-based, consistent and fully auditable.

Every score is calculated from 102 defined rules. Identical information will always produce an identical result, so each verdict can be explained, reviewed and relied upon.

50
RISEN 0 to 49 50 to 100 BURNED

Our verdicts draw on the phoenix at the heart of our identity. A firm that withstands scrutiny has RISEN. One that does not is BURNED.

Fairness

Findings are weighed in context. Safeguards are built into the rules so that genuine firms are not penalised for legitimate trading names, recent authorisation or a common director's name.

Decisive red flags

Certain findings are serious enough to determine the verdict on their own. Lesser indicators influence the outcome only in combination.

AI explains. It never decides.

The score is calculated before any artificial intelligence is involved. AI is used solely to draft the plain-English audit trail, and an independent consistency review cannot alter the result.

Transparent reporting

Every finding is set out in clear, plain English, so you, your bank or law enforcement can review the basis of the verdict. Reports are available as PDF, plain text and structured data.

Scope of assessment

58 checks across six areas of risk.

An overview of what every MetaAshes assessment examines. Select an area to view its checks. Our methodology and scoring weights remain proprietary.

FCA Financial Services Register

Establishes whether the firm is authorised, whether its regulatory credentials are genuinely its own, and whether it is permitted to offer what it is selling.

  1. 01Firm Reference Number validity
  2. 02Claimed parent or principal firm
  3. 03Ownership of the reference number
  4. 04Registered trading names
  5. 05Authorisation status
  6. 06Scope of regulatory permissions
  7. 07Official website on record
  8. 08FCA Warning List screening
  9. 09Official telephone number on record
  10. 10Regulatory restrictions
  11. 11Product identity verification

Data sources

Grounded in the official record.

Every assessment draws on authoritative UK regulatory, corporate and technical sources, retrieved directly from each source and never taken from the firm's own materials.

01 Refreshed hourly

FCA Financial Services Register

The UK regulator's authoritative record of authorised firms, their permissions and their official contact details.

02 Refreshed hourly

Companies House

The UK's official register of companies, their officers, filings, controlling parties and secured charges.

03 Refreshed daily

UK Sanctions List

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office's register of individuals and entities subject to UK financial sanctions.

04 Refreshed daily

HMRC Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme

HMRC's register of businesses approved to trade alcohol wholesale, including wine and whisky merchants.

05 Refreshed daily

HMRC money laundering penalties

HMRC's published record of businesses penalised under the Money Laundering Regulations.

06 Refreshed daily

Information Commissioner's Office

The UK register of organisations that process personal data, including their registration status.

07 Refreshed hourly

OpenFIGI

Bloomberg's open, free financial instrument registry, which identifies the exact security an ISIN or SEDOL belongs to.

08 Refreshed hourly

Domain registries

Authoritative WHOIS and RDAP domain registration records, drawn from registries worldwide.

09 Refreshed daily

Certificate Transparency logs

Public records of website security certificates, which reveal how long a website has genuinely been operating.

10 Queried live

Mail and web records

Technical records confirming whether the firm's email address and website are genuinely operational.

11 Updated monthly

Ofcom numbering data

The communications regulator's allocation of every UK telephone number range, showing whether a number can exist and which phone company holds it.

12 Never stored

Your account

Your account of how the firm approached you, what it is offering and how it has asked to be paid. No register holds this information, yet it is frequently the most revealing evidence of all.

Invest with confidence

Proceed with confidence, or stop before it is too late.

MetaAshes is designed to support sound investment decisions with legitimate firms, not merely to identify fraud. Whatever the outcome, you will know precisely what to do next.

RISEN

Proceed with appropriate diligence

  • Nothing critical surfaced. This is an automated indicator, not a guarantee.
  • Confirm the firm yourself on the FCA register at register.fca.org.uk
  • Call only the number published on the register, never one they gave you.
  • Pay by bank transfer to a company account or by card. Never in cryptocurrency.
  • Walk away from pressure to decide today, and from any guaranteed return.
BURNED

Cease contact and act immediately

  • Send them no more money, whatever reason they give for needing it.
  • Never pay a fee, tax or charge to release your own funds. That request is the fraud.
  • Call your bank today, say you have been defrauded, and ask about APP fraud reimbursement.
  • Report to the FCA at fca.org.uk/consumers/report-scam-us
  • Report to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk or on 0300 123 2040.
  • Keep every message, screenshot and payment reference, and attach this report.
  • Ignore anyone offering to recover your money for a fee. That is the same fraud twice.

Verify before you invest.

A few minutes of independent verification, before your capital leaves your account.

Verify a firm View pricing