At first it sounds reassuringly familiar, strong (Powers) and distinguished (Booth) all at the same time.

However, if you think about it for just three seconds, you'll realise why it does all those things: it's actually almost identical to the name of a lantern-jawed movie star!

(The actor spells his name with an "e" at the end which the "investment firm" probably hopes will stop him from suing them. ) Powers Boothe is the guy who looks a bit like Stacey Keach and played Cy in Deadwood as well as the vice president in the TV series 24.

But the role you might most associate with his dodgy namesake is that of corrupt Senator Roarke in Sin City.

Powers Booth (the dodgy investment company) is one of dozens which the Financial Regulator has named and shamed in warnings published in newspapers and on its website (www. financialregulator. ie).

The latest to prompt a warning from the Regulator in recent weeks is Huntington Asset Management Group (Switzerland).

It is a criminal offence for an investment firm to operate in Ireland unless it is authorized by the Financial Regulator. Clients of unauthorised firms are not protected by the Consumer Protection Code and are not eligible for compensation from the Investor Compensation Scheme.

The regulator has to date issued 67 warnings concerning 125 firms.

Often, these "firms" are just names.

But how do you spot one of these dodgy investment companies?

It may not be as easy as it sounds. The investment could sound perfectly plausible . . . you may even get an initial windfall . . .just as a tactic.

Then you will be lured into committing a much larger sum that won't prove so lucrative.

Boiler-Room operations . . . as these outfits are called . . . also tend to be based in far-off, and often exotic, locations such as the Bahamas or Singapore.

But others claim to be in respectable, well-regulated countries such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

They will frequently ask you to wire money abroad . . . but you should have hung up long before that stage.

Another thing to watch out for is the type of name chosen by the company.

A glance through the list of firms the Financial Regulator has issued warnings about suggests that the more exalted the name, the dodgier the company.

Put yourself in the place of a financial huckster. What sort of name would you dream up for your company?

You might think of a couple of corporate buzzwords and throw them together, for example, International Consortium Growth Holdings (Bahamas and USA).

Or you'd combine a couple of words associated with wealth and financial probity and, hey, presto!. . . some sap on the other end of a cold call just might be impressed.

Hence the classically dodgy Morgan Vanderbilt (USA) . . . which combines a word associated with some highly reputable blue-blood investment house (Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan etc) with the surname of one of the wealthiest New York families (Vanderbilt). (Neither of which have anything to do with the errant "firm" named by the Regulator, I hasten to add. ) Another one is the Cohen Nesbitt Group (Singapore), which suggests a promising combination of Jewish financial savvy (Cohen) and WASPish old money (Nesbitt).

Or you might simply think of some posh and/or reassuringly upright words, like Burlington International (Hong Kong), Sterling Capital Corporation (Phillipines) etc.

So the next time someone from a firm that sounds something like Mason, Tait & Montgomery Inc (Singapore) gives you a call, you'll know what to do!

COLD-CALLING: HOW FAR CAN FIRMS GO?

Under the Consumer Protection Code, consumers may be contacted by phone or in person to sell a financial product or service only if:

>> the call is about a product or service bought by the consumer from them in the last year (or a similar product or service);

>> the consumer has given written permission to be contacted;

>> they have received a referral about the consumer, for example from a solicitor or an existing customer;

>> the consumer's number is in the business section of the phone directory.

Even within these limited circumstances, they can only do so between 9am and 9pm, Monday to Saturday (and not at all on a Sunday or on a bank or public holiday) unless the consumer has given them permission to contact them at other times.

Also at the beginning of any call or visit, the caller must say who they are and why they are calling. They must then give the consumer the chance to say whether they want the call to continue or not. If the consumer asks not to be contacted again, the firm must make sure they do not contact them again.

The full set of the requirements for unsolicited contact (coldcalling) are set out on pg 15 of the Financial Regulator's Code which is available on the following link: http: //www. financialregulator. ie/data/pub_files/Code_Doc_roll over-4-2. pdf