The health and economic crisis is inspiring scammers: from bogus online savings schemes to promises of credit whose sole purpose is to collect personal information and extort money, scams are flourishing. Faced with this reality, regulators such as the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) and the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR) are extremely vigilant.
An environment conducive to scams
At the beginning of May, financial regulatorsAMF andACPR warned of the growing number of scams, particularly fraudulent appeals for donations.
A few weeks ago, they once again called for the utmost caution at a joint conference. After the proliferation of bogus online fundraising schemes, officially intended for hospitals, new scams are now appearing. These include fake investments and credit offers.
Fraud targeting French savings
Households have been saving heavily throughout the containment period, and this trend has continued into the early stages of decontainment. So it can be tempting to invest your money, and crooks know this perfectly well.
Financial regulators are once again warning against atypical investments: crooks dangle extremely attractive returns by investing in products and goods such as whisky, chloroquine, airport parking spaces and even dairy cows.
In the case of dairy cows, the principle is as follows: the investor participates in the purchase of cattle from an asset management company, which undertakes to lease the cattle thus financed to farmers. The investor is promised a return on the rental income. The problem is that this pseudo-company doesn't exist, and private investors never see a return on their investment. It's the same with whisky, which is presented as a particularly profitable safe investment.
In addition, a number of websites offer online training courses lasting just a few hours, at a time when the French seem to be taking an interest in the subject since the collapse of the stock markets at the start of the crisis. In reality, these training courses are pyramid sales, involving the constant search for new customers.
In just four months, 200 company names have been added to the AMF and ACPR blacklists, compared with a total of 500 last year.