FCA executive director Sarah Pritchard has delivered a speech at the Financial Crime Summit where she compares financial con artists to Covid, a “complex and ever-evolving enemy” that requires all sections of society to act to fight it
More than seven in ten people have been targeted by scammers in the past three months as fraudsters attempt to take advantage of the cost-of-living crisis, according to figures cited by the FCA.
Regulator sees a rise in scams exploiting cost of living crisis, including false access to rebates from utility companies.
There has been a rise in complaints about investment scams to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) between April and July 2022, with a large proportion involving cryptocurrency (Consumers warned about rise in investment scams (financial-ombudsman.org.uk)).
Savers and investors urged to beware increasingly sophisticated scamming techniques.
Tom Selby, head of retirement policy at AJ Bell, comments: “It is a depressing fact that the more vulnerable people become, the more active financial fraudsters are. We saw this during the worst of the Covid pandemic, and with inflation surging we are seeing it again during the cost-of-living crisis.
“Scammers often use sophisticated techniques to swindle people out of their savings, with cryptocurrency ‘investments’ offering huge potential returns increasingly used to tempt people to part with their cash.
“These investments often end up being a Ponzi Scheme, or…
