The Financial Conduct Authority named a fake Pepperstone in March 2025. The notice lists three websites, six telephone numbers, two London addresses and a postcode that does not exist. One of those domains is now on sale for $995.
A correction first
An earlier version of this page treated Pepperstone itself as the problem. That was wrong, and we have rewritten it.
Pepperstone Limited is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, firm reference number 684312, registered in London EC2R 8DQ. Nothing in this article is a criticism of it. It is the firm being impersonated.
What the FCA published
The notice is titled “PepperStone VIP / EMC Capitals”, published 4 March 2025. It is an unauthorised-firm warning: “This firm may be providing or promoting financial services or products without our permission. You should avoid dealing with this firm and beware of scams.”
What makes it worth reading is the sheer quantity of contact details recorded against a single operation:
- Three websites: pepperstone.life, pepperstone.vip, emc-capitals.com
- Three landline numbers: +44 161 388 2476, 69902359783, 78153630
- Three mobiles: +44 7538 082462, +44 7452 889373, and +1 647 812 4495 — a Toronto number
- Two email addresses at emc-capitals.com, one of them a named individual
- Two London addresses
An authorised broker has one switchboard. Six numbers across two countries is not a contact page, it is a call-centre roster — and it tells you how the operation works: several people phoning from several handsets, any of which can be discarded the moment it is reported.
The postcode that does not exist
The two addresses on the notice are 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ and 11 Hanover Square, Westminster, London, WIS 1JJ.
Look carefully at the second one. Hanover Square is in Mayfair, and its postcode is W1S 1JJ — W, the digit one, S. What the operation supplied was WIS 1JJ, with a capital letter I where the digit should be. UK postcodes do not begin with two letters followed by a letter in that position. It is not a real postcode and never was.
That single character is the whole operation in miniature. Somebody copied a prestigious address from a website, mistyped it, and never checked — because the address was never meant to receive post. It was meant to be glanced at.
One of the domains is now for sale
We checked all three addresses on 11 September 2026. pepperstone.life and pepperstone.vip return no DNS record. emc-capitals.com resolves — to a GoDaddy sales page.
The domain the FCA warned about is being offered at $995 to buy outright, or $166 a month to lease. Anyone can have it.
That matters more than it sounds. A domain with history — age, inbound links, search results, a reputation with email providers — is worth more than a fresh one. The next buyer inherits every trace the previous operation left behind, including people who still have “EMC Capitals” in their contacts and any documents pointing at that address. A warned domain does not retire. It gets resold.
How to check properly, in two minutes
- Look up the firm reference number yourself at register.fca.org.uk. Pepperstone Limited is 684312. Never use a number or link supplied by the caller.
- Call the number on the register, not the one in the email. If your contact is genuine, that number reaches them.
- Read the domain. The authorised firm is at pepperstone.com. Not .life, not .vip.
- Paste the postcode into a map. Ten seconds, and it would have caught this one.
Verified evidence — checked 11 September 2026
- Pepperstone Limited is FCA authorised, FRN 684312, London EC2R 8DQ. No connection with the operation below.
- FCA warning “PepperStone VIP / EMC Capitals”, published 4 March 2025. Unauthorised-firm warning.
- Websites on the notice: pepperstone.life, pepperstone.vip, emc-capitals.com.
- Telephones: +44 161 388 2476, 69902359783, 78153630. Mobiles: +44 7538 082462, +44 7452 889373, +1 647 812 4495 (Toronto).
- Emails: christopher.bailey@emc-capitals.com, support@emc-capitals.com.
- Addresses: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ; and 11 Hanover Square, Westminster, London, “WIS 1JJ” — the real Hanover Square postcode is W1S 1JJ. “WIS 1JJ” is not a valid UK postcode.
- Domain check: pepperstone.life and pepperstone.vip have no DNS record. emc-capitals.com now serves a GoDaddy sales page — $995 to buy, $166/month to lease.
- Not authorised: no Financial Ombudsman Service access, no FSCS protection.
Our verdict
Clone fraud does not target obscure firms. It targets names that survive a search, because your own diligence is the weapon being turned against you. Finding that Pepperstone is real and regulated tells you nothing about the person emailing you.
Everything this operation supplied was designed to be glanced at rather than checked: a famous Covent Garden address, a Mayfair one, a wall of phone numbers. Spend two minutes instead of ten seconds and it collapses — starting with a postcode that a map cannot find.
If you were contacted by “Pepperstone” from any address other than pepperstone.com, you were not speaking to the authorised firm. Tell your bank today and report it to Action Fraud. The same borrowed-credibility pattern runs through the seven fake XTBs, one of which copied the real head office, and through firms that rent a City postcode shared by hundreds of companies.
Sources: FCA Financial Services Register entry for Pepperstone Limited, FRN 684312, register.fca.org.uk, read 11 September 2026; FCA warning notice “PepperStone VIP / EMC Capitals”, published 4 March 2025, read at fca.org.uk on 11 September 2026; DNS lookups for pepperstone.life, pepperstone.vip and emc-capitals.com, and the GoDaddy sales page for emc-capitals.com, all 11 September 2026.
