The Financial Conduct Authority has received 16,400 enquiries about possible scams between April and September 2021.
This is a one third increase on enquiries over the same period one year before.
Boiler rooms, cryptocurrency scams, FCA-impersonation, and recovery rooms are the four most reported types of scams.
Hargreaves Lansdown senior investment and markets analyst Susannah Streeter says: “The watchdog is swimming against an increasingly treacherous tide of scams and suspect investments.
“Given the volatile rise of coins and tokens over the pandemic, it seems many more fraudulent operations have been launched, to take advantage of consumers’ fear of missing out on the crypto rollercoaster.
“The number of boiler room scams is also marching upwards, with fraudsters posing as bogus investment firms, who cold call people and pressure them into buying shares which are often worthless or even non-existent.
“Recovery scams are also multiplying which add financial insult to injury to investors who have already lost money to scammers by offering to find stolen cash for an advance fee.”
The FCA also saw an increase in reports about possible cryptocurrency scams. This applies both to its supervision hub, with a 14% increase compared to the previous six months, and its ScamSmart with a 49% surge.
As a result, the regulator opened 300 cases relating to potential unregistered cypto-asset businesses in the same period.
It says they are “likely to be involved in…
