Binance UK office one of 2,403 companies sharing ‘utility closet’ in Suffolk

June 20, 2023 Coin Telegraph

address

Binance has drawn attention for using a small building as its registered office in the UK, but tech firms have used a similar trick for years.

The United Kingdom-registered address for an entity of one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Binance, is nothing but a tiny building in Britain’s east that is shared by thousands of other companies.

On June 19, a post on the r/buttcoin subreddit showed the so-called “utility closet” Binance Ltd and thousands of other firms use as a registered office address in the U.K. — a tactic often used by other tech firms and large companies.

Binance Ltd’s address points to the small town of Mildenhall in Suffolk county, England. Google Maps shows the site is a small, nondescript garage building on the outer edge of the town about an hour and a half's drive from Britain’s capital London.

*The top image shows Binance’s office address registration with the government while the image spliced below shows the address on Google Maps. Source: Reddit*

Companies House — the government's company’s registrar — shows Binance Ltd shares the address with 2,403 active companies in total.

The address is actually the site of a company called OfficeServ, a virtual registered address service provider that aims to give a “believable business location,” as per its website.

Companies House shows Binance Ltd is registered to provide ”other service activities not elsewhere classified.” Binance has around six entities in Britain across various addresses registered to provide IT and financial services.

Cointelegraph contacted Binance for more information on the entity but did not immediately receive a response.

Tech firms shell games

Technology companies have employed such virtual “shell” addresses around the world and in the United States for years. These are used for a host of reasons — from providing privacy, obscuring patent filings or registering a business in a corporate tax haven.

Most notable is the Corporation Trust Company, the world’s largest registered agent service firm, used by thousands of firms, including well-known companies such as Google, Walmart, Coca-Cola and Apple. It operates out of a similarly nondescript brick building in Delaware.

This utterly nondescript building in Wilmington, Delaware is (probably) the most famous address in corporate law.

1209 North Orange Street.

It houses the Corporation Trust Center, the registered agent address of about three hundred thousand businesses. Including some giants. pic.twitter.com/HhdaUfKXCU
— Lucius Winslow (@Lucius_Winslow) November 15, 2020

The firm was used by Apple last November in an attempt to obscure the patent fillings for its recently announced Vision Pro headset and related operating system.

Another firm, Wyoming Corporate Services, was described in a 2011 Reuters exposé as a “brick house” in a “sleepy city” and home to 2,000 registered companies at the time.

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Crypto scammers abuse ‘lax’ UK company laws to fool victims: Report

February 1, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

A report suggests companies are able to register in the U.K. very easily, making them appear more credible to potential scam victims.

The United Kingdom is host to at least 168 companies accused of running fraudulent crypto or foreign exchange (forex) scams, according to an independent analysis.

A joint investigation by media firms the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Observer published Jan. 29 found that organized crime groups are using the U.K. as their base due to its “lax regulation.”

The actual number of U.K.-based crypto or forex companies involved in scams is likely far greater than 168 as the number was calculated by reviewing lists of suspected shell companies and cross-referencing them with reports of fraudulent activity on various websites.

Around half of the companies found were linked to so-called “pig-butchering scams.”

A pig-butchering scams is an insidious scheme where the scammer builds trust with the victim — often incorporating romance — before convincing them to deposit money or crypto onto a trading platform or virtual wallet that the scammer controls.

The scammer then continues to “fatten” the victim and build further trust before persuading them to transfer a much larger sum, only to then make off with the funds.

Victims were often approached on social media or through dating websites such as Tinder, according to the report.

Additionally, many of the victims interviewed in the report said that the companies appeared more legitimate as they were based in the U.K., saying they would not have fallen for the scam had the companies been located elsewhere.

Registering a company in the U.K. costs as little as 12 British pounds ($14.85) and requires no form of identification, making it easy for fraudulent companies to register there and gain “sham credibility.”

Companies are required to provide a U.K. office address to register, however, which has led to some residential addresses being bombarded with letters intended for companies that claim to have an office there.

*Letters that a U.K. resident claimed to have received that were intended for shell companies registered at their address. Source: The Observer*

“What’s been happening in the U.K. is unconscionable,” financial crime investigator Graham Barrow was quoted as saying. “We have known for 20 years at least that U.K. companies are being used in these scams and that we are probably the world’s biggest provider of scam companies.”

The U.K. government has been trying to crack down on crypto companies in the region, with the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority requiring that all businesses that carry on crypto asset activity register with it as of Jan. 10, 2020.

The regulator has been very stringent with its approvals, however, with many crypto-related businesses continuing to operate as unregistered businesses as it tries to find a balance between providing a safe environment for investors and supporting innovation in the industry.