The Financial Conduct Authority named a Coinbase clone in February 2024. It called itself Coinbaseie, staffed itself with two named men, and answered on two Waterford landlines. Everything about it was built to feel Irish.
A correction first
An earlier version of this page treated Coinbase itself as the problem. That was wrong, and we have rewritten it.
Coinbase’s UK regulated entity is CB Payments Ltd, FCA firm reference number 900635, registered at The Scalpel, 18th Floor, 52 Lime Street, London. The FCA names it on the warning notice itself, as the genuine firm the fraudsters were pretending to be. Nothing here is a criticism of it.
What the FCA published
The notice, published 9 February 2024, is a clone warning: “This firm is not authorised by us but has been contacting people pretending to be an authorised firm.”
It names the operation Coinbaseie, and records:
- Two email addresses, both at coinbaseie.com: martinharvey@coinbaseie.com and anthonycollins@coinbaseie.com
- Five telephone entries: +353 51 571616 and +353 51 571608 — both Waterford, Ireland; +44 7766 855941, a UK mobile, listed twice; and +31 6 37827703, a Dutch mobile
The costume is Irish
Look at what those details are doing together.
The name is Coinbase + ie — ie being Ireland’s country code, the suffix on every Irish website. The landlines are 051 numbers, the dialling code for Waterford. The two staff names, Martin Harvey and Anthony Collins, read as Irish or British rather than as the generic first-name-only aliases most of these operations use.
That is a complete identity, assembled cheaply and consistently: a plausible name, a plausible location, and plausible people. It is aimed at someone in Ireland or the UK who wants to feel they are dealing with somebody local and reachable.
And then there is the Dutch mobile, sitting in the same list — the one detail that does not fit the story the rest is telling.
Why a phone number proves nothing
Most people treat a local landline as reassurance. It is worth knowing how little it costs to have one.
Numbers in almost any area code can be bought online from a voice provider in minutes and forwarded to a handset anywhere on earth. A Waterford 051 number does not mean an office in Waterford. It means somebody paid a few euros a month so that your caller display would say Waterford.
The same is true of the named staff. A name in an email signature is typed, not verified. If you want to know whether Martin Harvey works for a regulated firm, the firm’s own switchboard — the number on the FCA register, not the one he gave you — is the only thing that will tell you.
The domain is gone
We checked coinbaseie.com on 11 September 2026. It returns no DNS record at all — DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN, the answer for a domain registered to nobody. Warned in February 2024, unregistered by 2026.
The email addresses died with it. Anyone still holding correspondence from martinharvey@coinbaseie.com is holding a letter from an address that no longer exists.
Verified evidence — checked 11 September 2026
- FCA clone warning “Coinbaseie”, published 9 February 2024.
- Genuine firm named on the notice: CB Payments Ltd, FRN 900635, The Scalpel, 18th Floor, 52 Lime Street, London. It has no connection with the clone.
- Clone emails: martinharvey@coinbaseie.com, anthonycollins@coinbaseie.com.
- Clone telephones: +353 51 571616 and +353 51 571608 (Waterford, Ireland), +44 7766 855941 (UK mobile, listed twice on the notice), +31 6 37827703 (Netherlands mobile).
- coinbaseie.com returns no DNS record on 11 September 2026.
- Clone firms are not authorised: no Financial Ombudsman Service access, no FSCS protection.
Our verdict
This one is worth studying because of how ordinary it looks. No impossible returns, no guaranteed profits, no mining of elements that do not exist — just a familiar name, an Irish address code and two men with names.
That is the harder kind to spot, and it is why the only reliable check is structural rather than instinctive: find the exact legal entity on the FCA register, note its firm reference number, and call the number the register lists. For Coinbase in the UK that entity is CB Payments Ltd, FRN 900635. A firm calling itself “Coinbaseie” is not it.
If you sent money or crypto to anyone using that name, tell your bank today and report it to Action Fraud. The same borrowed-identity method runs through six fake Admiral Markets and seven fake XTBs.
Sources: FCA clone warning notice “Coinbaseie”, published 9 February 2024, read directly at fca.org.uk on 11 September 2026, including the genuine-firm details it records for CB Payments Ltd (FRN 900635); DNS lookup for coinbaseie.com, 11 September 2026.
