Hedgemark Securities LLC presents itself as a New York investment bank with more than 275 closed deals worth $30 billion, and the UK regulator advises against dealing with its website.
We opened the site, its code and the warning itself, then compared the name with the US broker-dealer register, where the answer proved more complicated than a simple fake.
Overview
What Hedgemark Securities LLC Claims to Be
We opened hedgemarksecuritiesllc.com and found a polished five-page site for a boutique investment bank that advises middle market companies on mergers, financings and restructurings.
The home page shows 275+ transactions, $30B of financings and sales, 75 merger deals and 30 management buyouts, and the only ways to reach the firm are email and phone.
What Our Checks Found
The exact name and Park Avenue address belong to a broker-dealer registered since 2013, yet the website lists a Long Island phone number and a 54-day-old domain.
Across all five pages we found no named person, client or deal, no registration number and no mention of FINRA, and the secure version fails with an expired certificate.
What We Could and Could Not Verify
Here is where the evidence stands after our checks:
- Verified by us: the FCA warning, the registered firm’s record, the domain dates, the file dates, the missing names and numbers, and the certificate failure.
- Not found: a person, a client, a closed deal, a registration number, a payment page, or any link between the website and the registered firm.
- Not verified: who runs the website, what happens after the first email or call, and whether anyone has lost money through it.
Our advice is not to deal with anyone who uses this website, email address or phone number, and the section on what to do below covers anyone who already did.
What the FCA Warning Says
We began with the primary document, the FCA’s warning about www.hedgemarksecuritiesllc.com, which was first published on 29 October 2026 and had not been updated when we read it.
The notice warns that the firm may be promoting financial services without permission, is not authorised by the FCA, and may be targeting people in the UK.
The notice lists a Park Avenue address in New York with the ZIP code 10022 but no building number, the phone number +16314988331 and the email address info@hedgemarksecuritiesllc.com.
Anyone dealing with the firm would have no access to the Financial Ombudsman Service and no Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection, so getting money back after a failure is unlikely.
That is a statement about permission, not a court’s finding of fraud, and the page adds that firms may use another business’s details so the information looks genuine.
The last sentence deserves attention, because the next check we ran turned up a regulated firm with exactly this name.
A Registered Firm Already Uses This Name
We searched FINRA’s public BrokerCheck records for the name and found a brokerage called HEDGEMARK SECURITIES LLC, listed under CRD number 164503 and SEC number 8-69106.
The record shows a Delaware limited liability company formed on 24 May 2011 and approved on 2 January 2013, with zero disclosures and registrations across 49 US jurisdictions.
Its main and mailing address is 300 Park Avenue, 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10022, and the business phone on file is 212-888-1300.
FINRA’s separate list of regulated firms beginning with H carried the same name and Park Avenue address when we opened it, with an update date of 9 November 2026.
The website uses that exact name, and its contact section names 300 Park Avenue, 22nd Floor as headquarters, which matches the registered address down to the floor.
The phone number is where the two part ways: the website lists 1 631 498 8331, the register lists 212-888-1300, and 631 is a Long Island code.
We searched the web for the 631 number and found no page that mentions it, so it connected to nothing we could identify.
Two firms can share a name by coincidence, but sharing a street, a floor and the pose of a New York securities firm is much harder to explain.
We make no accusation against the registered firm, and we cannot prove from outside that it did not publish this website, but every difference we measured points the other way.
The cleanest test costs a minute: look the firm up on BrokerCheck and call the number FINRA lists, never a number from an email or a website.
A Domain 54 Days Old for a Firm Approved in 2013
We pulled the public registration record for hedgemarksecuritiesllc.com and found it was created on 17 September 2026 through the registrar PDR Ltd., trading as PublicDomainRegistry.com.
That made the domain 54 days old on 10 November 2026, and only 42 days old when the FCA published its warning.
The registered firm has been approved since January 2013, a gap of nearly 14 years that the website never tries to explain.
We then checked when the site itself was built, because the server stamps every file with a last-modified time.
The script file, favicon, logo and four service pages date from 20 September 2026, between 03:08 and 03:42 GMT, and the home page from 21 September.
So the whole site was assembled in under four days after the domain came into existence, which does not fit a pitch built on years of experience.
The domain’s DNS record carries the serial number 2026092004, which by the usual date-plus-counter habit reads as the fourth zone edit on 20 September, in step with the file times.
The Internet Archive’s index holds just three captures of the domain, all from 18 and 19 September 2026, and each is an error response (503, 503 and 403).
A new domain proves nothing alone, yet the site talks about its principals’ collective experience and work for hundreds of companies, and none of it existed online before late September.
What the Website Promises and What It Leaves Out
The home page opens with four numbers: more than 275 investment banking transactions, $30 billion of financings and sales, 75 merger and acquisition deals, and 30 management buyouts.
We ran the arithmetic: the 75 sales and 30 buyouts make 105 deals, leaving 170 of the 275 unexplained, and $30 billion over 275 deals averages about $109 million each.
That sits oddly beside the same page describing its clients as mostly family-owned businesses or entrepreneurs.
The About text attributes these figures to the firm’s principals over their careers, not to the firm itself, yet it never names a single principal.
We read all five pages for a person, a client, a closed deal, a team page or a regulatory number and found none of them.
The site never mentions FINRA, the SEC, SIPC or a CRD number, which is telling, because a registered firm would have something to point to.
The page titled Financial Services should set out a service, but it holds one paragraph listing industries from Consumer Products to Technology and Software.
Other Advisory Services is one short paragraph about long-term relationships, and every page ends with the same privacy notice, citing your account applications and transactions you performed with the firm.
An advisory boutique serving companies has no account applications, so that wording reads like it came from a retail brokerage, although we cannot tell where it was taken from.
Name-Swap Leftovers in the Text and Source
The visible text of the home page contains the full name Hedgemark Securities LLC 19 times, in places where any real firm would simply put we or our.
Some sentences stumble as a result: the About paragraph begins Hedgemark Securities LLC, is an investment firm, with a stray comma, and another speaks of Hedgemark Securities LLC’s client.
That pattern looks like a find-and-replace on another firm’s brochure, which is our inference from the text, and we could not identify a source.
In the page source, the contact form and a newsletter signup are both commented out, so nothing on the site accepts a message.
The Get Started button in the header only scrolls down to the contact block, which holds two addresses, an email address and a phone number.
The only way in is therefore a direct email or call, and whatever happens after that happens off the website, where we cannot inspect it.
We found no payment page, wallet address, bank detail, login or client portal, so this investigation could not trace where anyone’s money would go.
A Failed Secure Connection and Generic Hosting
We tried the secure version of the site and the connection failed at the certificate check, because the server presented a self-signed certificate that vouched only for itself.
That certificate names the server PLESK-WEB7, not the domain, and expired on 19 October 2025, eleven months before the domain was registered, so it is the hosting machine’s default.
Only the plain http address serves the pages, and the response headers show a Windows server running ASP.NET and Plesk.
A visitor following an https link is likely to meet a browser warning, and one typing the bare address may land on an unencrypted page.
The address 162.222.225.82 sits in a network block registered to PublicDomainRegistry Networks and resolves in reverse to plesk-web7.webhostbox.net, while the name servers belong to whois.com.
Email runs from the same bundle: the mail record points to a host on the domain itself, and the SPF record authorises the hosting provider’s mail servers.
The zone’s administrator contact is a free webmail address with the year 2026 in it, which we left out of this article because it may belong to a private individual.
None of this is unusual for a small business, so we treat it as setup detail and not as evidence of who stands behind the website.
Who Runs Hedgemark Securities LLC?
The Legal Name Belongs to a Registered Firm
The only legal entity with this name that we found is the Delaware company in the BrokerCheck record, which lists a parent company as owner and three officers.
The website names no company beyond the trading name: its copyright line carries only Hedgemark Securities LLC, with no state, no registration number and no officer.
We also searched the Companies House register for hedgemark and it returned no results, so no UK company carries this name.
The Address Leads to the Registered Firm, Not to the Site
The Park Avenue address on the website matches the registered firm exactly, and the FCA notice shows the same street and ZIP code without a building number.
The site adds a satellite address on Fifth Avenue, and BrokerCheck mentions two branches without showing where, so we cannot tell whether that is one of them.
An address match shows what the website copied or shares, not who operates it, and it is no sign that the registered firm knows about this site.
The Domain and the Missing Registrant
The public registry record lists only the registrar, the dates and four name servers, with no registrant, and it was never changed after the day it was created.
The domain was registered for a single year, to 17 September 2027, and no earlier version of it appears anywhere we could look.
What We Could Not Confirm
We could not establish who runs the website, whether the registered firm has any link to it, what happens after first contact, or whether anyone has lost money.
We did not email, call or fill in anything, and we did not search the FCA Firm Checker, business registers or securities regulators of individual US jurisdictions.
We also found no standalone public website for the registered firm to compare against this one, so the comparison rests on the regulator records.
What to Do If You Contacted This Website
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Stop all contact. Do not answer the info@ address, return calls from the 631 number, click links or sign anything that arrives from this website.
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Verify the firm yourself. Open FINRA’s BrokerCheck record and call the number listed there, not the one in any message you received.
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Send no money. Do not pay an engagement fee, retainer, deposit or release charge, and do not move funds to a new account at anyone’s request.
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Keep every record. Save emails with full headers, call logs, any documents you signed, and the dates and amounts of anything you sent.
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Tell the authorities. In the UK, use the FCA page for unauthorised firms, and in the US file a complaint at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
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Call your bank or card issuer. If you paid, ask about a recall or dispute straight away, using the steps in the FTC’s guide to disputing charges.
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Ignore recovery offers. Anyone who contacts you promising to get lost money back for an upfront fee is usually running a second scam.
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Protect your identity. If you sent ID or company documents, change reused passwords, turn on two-factor authentication and watch your accounts for new activity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Hedgemark Securities LLC legit?
The name belongs to a registered US broker-dealer, but we found nothing that ties hedgemarksecuritiesllc.com to it, and the FCA treats the website’s operator as unauthorised in the UK.
Is Hedgemark Securities LLC registered with FINRA and the SEC?
A firm with that name is, under CRD 164503 and SEC number 8-69106, but the website shows no registration number, so its pages cannot be checked against that record.
Is the website run by the registered firm?
We could not prove either way. The phone number differs, the domain is new and the site omits every registration detail, so confirm through the number FINRA lists.
Why would the FCA warn about a New York firm?
The FCA warns about any unauthorised firm that may be targeting people in the UK, wherever its address is, and this notice flags that possibility here.
Does the 631 phone number matter?
It matters because the registered firm’s number is 212-888-1300, a Manhattan code, while 631 serves Long Island, and we found no page connecting the 631 number to any known business.
What should I do if I received an email from this domain?
Do not reply, click or send anything, check the firm on BrokerCheck, and forward the message to the FCA or ReportFraud.ftc.gov together with its full headers.
The Bottom Line
Do not deal with hedgemarksecuritiesllc.com. The FCA lists it as unauthorised, the site names no person or deal, and it uses the name and address of a registered firm.
If you need a merger or financing adviser, find the firm on BrokerCheck, call the number on the register, and ask for a written engagement letter before sending anything.
If you already replied or paid, stop all contact, keep the records, ask your bank about a recall, tell the FCA or ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and refuse new fees.
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