Vintage Group is offering its services via its website vintagegroup-invest.com. According to the website, the company’s registered office is located in London, United Kingdom. According to the terms and conditions on the website, however, the company is subject to Californian law.

In the past, there have been frequent reports of attempted fraud where shares in well-known companies are offered for subscription. However, these shares are not delivered to the clients after payment is made, and the offerors can no longer be reached; in some cases, the offered shares do not even exist.

BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify attempted fraud at an early stage.

Background information:

When communicating with customers, Vintage Group claims that it is not necessary to submit a prospectus to BaFin in order to offer shares in the Swedish company Northvolt AB. This is not true.

As a rule, securities may be offered to the public in Germany only if a prospectus has been published. This prospectus must be approved by BaFin prior to publication. Offering securities to the public without an approved prospectus constitutes a violation of the prospectus requirement under Article 3(1) of the EU Prospectus Regulation – unless an exemption applies.

During the prospectus approval process, BaFin checks whether the minimum information required by law is included in the prospectus and whether its content is understandable, coherent and consistent. However, BaFin is not responsible for checking whether the information contained in the prospectus is correct, for assessing the integrity of the issuer, or for monitoring the product in question.

No valid prospectus in relation to any public offering of Northvolt shares has been filed with or approved by BaFin. You can check whether an approved prospectus for an offer of securities to the public has been filed with BaFin by consulting the Prospectuses filed database on the BaFin website.

In addition, companies offering shares of other companies to consumers need prior authorisation from BaFin. The same applies for pre-IPO shares. Information on whether particular companies have been authorised by BaFin can be found in BaFin’s database of companies.