If you were contacted by something calling itself Five Rings Capital through the address fiverings-capital.com, you were not dealing with Five Rings Capital. You were dealing with a clone, and the Financial Conduct Authority said so in September 2025.
What the FCA published
The warning is a clone alert, first published 9 September 2025 and updated 8 October 2025. A clone alert means fraudsters have taken the identity of a firm the FCA authorises and are using it to approach the public.
The FCA’s wording is unambiguous: “This firm is not authorised by us but has been contacting people pretending to be an authorised firm.”
The details recorded against the clone: the domains fiverings-capital.com and fiverings-capital.info, and the telephone number +44 1224 980376.
The number gives it away
01224 is the dialling code for Aberdeen.
The firm being impersonated is registered at 201 Bishopsgate in the City of London and answers on an 020 number. Nothing about it is Scottish. Somebody setting up a clone bought whatever number was available and never considered that the area code would not match the address they were claiming — because almost nobody checks a dialling code against a postcode, and they were right about that.
It is a two-second test that costs nothing. If a firm claims a City of London office and calls you from an area code four hundred miles away, ask why before you answer anything else.
The domain is now dead
We checked fiverings-capital.com on 11 September 2026. It returns DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN — no DNS record exists at all. The address is gone, roughly a year after the FCA published.
That is the usual arc. A clone domain is registered, used hard for a few months, listed by a regulator, and then dropped. The operators do not contest the warning or shut down an operation; they abandon one address and register another under a different borrowed name. The notice remains on the FCA site permanently. The website it describes does not.
Why authorised firms get copied
Clone fraud does not target obscure businesses. It targets names that survive a search, because the victim’s own diligence is the mechanism being exploited.
Someone checks the name, finds a real regulated firm with a real London address and a firm reference number, and concludes the caller is genuine. The check performed was the wrong one. It confirmed that a firm of that name exists — not that the person making contact had anything to do with it.
The right check takes a minute: get the firm reference number, look it up yourself on the FCA register, and then call the number listed there. Never the number in the email, and never a link the caller sent you. Clones supply their own contact details precisely so that verification loops back to them.
Verified evidence — checked 11 September 2026
- FCA clone warning for fiverings-capital.com, first published 9 September 2025, last updated 8 October 2025.
- Clone domains named by the FCA: fiverings-capital.com and fiverings-capital.info. Clone telephone: +44 1224 980376 (Aberdeen dialling code).
- The firm being impersonated is authorised. Five Rings Capital LLP, FRN 624588, 201 Bishopsgate, 7th Floor, London EC2M 3AB. Its own address is fiverings.com and its listed number is +44 20 3998 3619. It is the victim of this operation, not the operator of it.
- FCA wording: “This firm is not authorised by us but has been contacting people pretending to be an authorised firm.”
- fiverings-capital.com is now dead — DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN, no DNS record. Verified 11 September 2026.
- Anyone who dealt with the clone has no Financial Ombudsman Service access and no FSCS protection.
This is a method, not an isolated case. Finalto was cloned five separate times in eleven months, and once a flagged domain is abandoned it can be resold and pointed at anything.
Our verdict
A hyphen and a different top-level domain were the whole disguise. fiverings-capital.com against fiverings.com — close enough that nobody reads it twice, different enough to be registered by anyone.
Read the domain character by character before you read anything else on the page. Then check the firm reference number on the register yourself. Those two habits defeat the entire category.
If you sent money to fiverings-capital.com or fiverings-capital.info, tell your bank today and report it to Action Fraud. The domain being dead does not end the matter — payment routes stay traceable long after a website disappears.
Sources: FCA clone firm warning for fiverings-capital.com, published 9 September 2025 and updated 8 October 2025, read directly at fca.org.uk; FCA Financial Services Register entry FRN 624588; DNS lookup on fiverings-capital.com, 11 September 2026.
