Don’t lose your fortune to fraudsters
In October 2021 one of our clients, who’s recently retired, nearly lost £16,000 to a fraudster. It was a slick and well-crafted scam involving email hacking, impersonation, and cloning a legitimate bank’s documents.
The only reason our client didn’t lose thousands of pounds, was because he read the small print. He had the foresight to pick up the phone to his financial adviser.
This is just the latest scam that has crossed my desk in recent months. In the UK, fraud has risen to a level where it poses a ‘national security threat’, according to the banking trade body, UK Finance.
In the first half of 2021, £754 million was stolen from consumers. That’s a rise of 30% on the same period in 2021.
Most of us think we’d be able to spot a scam. But criminals are employing increasingly sophisticated tactics, making it hard to tell if it’s a scam or not.
Although our client is happy for me to share his story, to help prevent others falling victim to fraud, he’d prefer to remain anonymous. So I’ll refer to him as Client A.
Email hacking
In September this year, Client A’s email account was hacked, allowing the criminals to trawl through his correspondence. They noticed that in July 2021, Client A had been working with one of our financial advisers, Ranjit Virk, and had made a sizeable investment.
The criminals worked quickly to set up a new domain (which looked very similar to our company name). They emailed Client A pretending to be our adviser Ranjit.
They took the trouble to copy and paste Ranjit’s signature, our company footer, and the logo of our professional association. The email was well-written and didn’t contain any grammatical or spelling mistakes. Everything seemed plausible.
By impersonating Ranjit, they were able to recommend Client A open a savings account with a bank called Allica. This is a genuine, bona fide, UK-registered bank.
The interest rate they were offering was 1.2% per annum. So it didn’t look too good to be true and therefore seemed genuine.
Assuming that his trusted financial adviser was keeping him up to date with good investment opportunities, Client A agreed to place £16,000 in the ‘savings account’. Thereby benefiting from a slightly higher rate of interest.
The scammers were quick to follow through with an email explaining how Client A should make the transfer. They also attached a cloned Allica Bank pdf with all the terms and conditions you’d expect.
Although this looked genuine, our client became suspicious. He called our adviser, Ranjit, and quickly established that his email account was hacked and that the ‘investment opportunity’ was in fact a sophisticated scam.
Anyone can become a victim of fraud. Not only is it financially painful, it is a distressing and humiliating experience.
We encourage people to talk openly with their family and friends about the possibility of scams and some of the scenarios and tactics scammers use.
Most importantly, if you feel you are being pressured or rushed to transfer money, it’s important to stop. Take stock of the situation and talk to a trusted professional or friend.
To read the full article and find out what Wealthwide’s full list of security checks is visit: https://dentistry.co.uk/2021/11/28/dont-lose-your-fortune-to-fraudsters/?fbclid=IwAR0AqeXFzJUBPMcTrkzzLVswD3MIGy_H2u6S591bgI2poOAO90rnk3743m8