Credit and savings account scams: the financial services policeman pinpoints a thousand fraudulent sites

Beware of overly attractive financial offers on the internet. The ACPR, the French financial services watchdog, said Thursday that it had placed 1,262 sites or entities offering financial products without authorization on its “black list” last year, with losses reaching dozens or even tens for victims. hundreds of thousands of euros. “Almost all” of the fraudulent offers “concern false credits or savings accounts and, for more than 53% of them, usurp the identity of an establishment or financial intermediary duly authorized to market such products,” explains the Prudential Control and Resolution Authority (ACPR) in a press release. The list also concerns payment services or insurance contracts.

Among the files received by the ACPR in 2023, the average loss observed concerning false booklets amounts to 93,000 euros, “with even a file worth 1 million euros,” a spokesperson told AFP. Concerning false credits, the average loss is 13,000 euros, but can be higher in certain files, up to 60,000 euros last year. The victims who reported themselves to the Authority “belonged to all socio-professional categories”. These amounts have been increasing in recent years, as has the number of sites or entities registered on the “blacklist” and the proportion of usurpation of authorized professionals.

Scammers have a very large potential target of victims, because savings accounts and loans are everyday financial products, deplores the ACPR. Victims, looking for a safe and profitable investment, are given confidence by their main characteristics: absence of risk of loss of capital and availability of funds. The ACPR is also warning savers this year about “the proliferation of false crowdfunding contracts offering to invest in projects relating to renewable energies, EHPADs, rooms in student residences or even in car parks equipped with charging stations electric".

In 2023, 46 fraudulent websites or emails were registered in this category, compared to 20 in 2022. The ACPR, sometimes assisted by the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), regularly warns the general public against the increase in scams around financial products. Its blacklists can be consulted at https://www.abe-infoservice.fr/liste-noire/listes-noires-et-alarmes-des-autorites.