If you think you have been contacted about a scam or believe you have paid money to fraudsters, read the info below to confirm. If you are a victim and have been scammed learn how to report a fraud and protect yourself from further losses.
Investment scams are designed to appear just like genuine investments. Fake companies and fraudsters that run investment scams are highly skilled and experienced at persuading their targets (victims) to invest money.
To give you some perspective, most fraud victims are highly educated and have experience with good investments. You are NOT alone and it is not your fault — no scammers = no scams.
How to Detect a Fraudster (Scammer)?
- Fraudsters will typically phone you out of the blue and will already know your name and personal information. This is known as a cold call.
- You may just receive an email at first with an offer asking you to respond. They will follow this with a cold call.
- The fraudster will try to quickly build rapport with you, relaxing you and gaining your trust. They will exude over-confidence and may seem to be too formal.
- They may use your first name and will talk about you and your interests, dreams and desires before turning you on to what they want to discuss. Investing Money with them!
- Once they have some level of rapport with you, they will present an investment opportunity of specific commodities including (carbon credits, gold, graphene, jewels, land, rare earth metals, wine) or just shares.
- The offer will be presented with a level of excitement, and with very high returns promised (often up to 30% return on investment) which is intended to get you emotionally charged about the deal on offer, to get you to part with your money.
- Me too! The fraudsters will tell you they have invested in the same investments they are presenting to you and will make up some elaborate story of their successes. These are LIES!
- The scammers will come to you prepared and armed with your personal information, age, income, occupation and often they even know your previous investments and shares you currently hold.
- You will be phoned multiple times with the intention of building a friendly relationship. The more you believe you have a trusted friend giving you professional investment advice, the easier it is for the fraudsters to get you to spend your money with them. The more you invest the more they will phone you.
- The fraudsters will speak like professional brokers and investors themselves, using language and terminology that real investment brokers and investors use.
- You will be given names of real companies and websites to trick you into believing they are a genuine company, with high prestige and are associated with these larger companies. This is social proof and it’s designed to authenticate their offer. But of course it’s all lies!
- Ultimately these individuals are aggressive salesmen with no moral backbone. They don’t care about you, they only want your money. Just say NO and put the phone down.
- They will NOT be listed on the appropriate financial & investment regulatory bodies as a registered and approved company. It’s critical that you confirm this.
A Typical Investment Fraud Looks Like this:
1. Level 1. You Are Sold Fake Shares from one or more fake companies.
2. You realise you have been scammed. You stop paying and you ignore the fraudsters.
3. Level 2. After a period of time another fake company will contact you purporting to be able to get your money back. They will ask for more money in advance – this is the follow-up fraud. This is typically the same fraudsters using a different fake company name. This is the level at which most damage is done and most money is lost — because the investor feels they are in too deep stop investing and they want to recover some money. Be very careful!