Fraudsters pose as Financial Ombudsman Service staff with fake compensation

Fraudsters posing as Ombudsman staff offer fake compensation schemes

Fraudsters impersonating representatives of authorised organisations cold call victims offering gift cards like iTunes, or they ask the victim to pay £300 to claim compensation or receive a grant. They claim to be Ombudsman, the service that handles the consumers' complaints related to the financial service industry. 

However, it never calls the victim seeking a fund transfer or a fee for claim reimbursement. Instead, the criminals use cyber tricks to hide their addresses and may ask for money to send an award or compensation in exchange. 

Such scams are based on spoofed emails and fake invoices where the money stolen from the accounts ranges from a thousand to tens of millions of pounds. 

They make fake Ombudsman calls where they ask for some fee, in the form of direct money transfer or gift cards, to release the compensation, or they pretend to be from a delivery company and ask the victim to send payment in a small amount like £2 or £3 to get the deliveries. 

They ask for personal details to extract information that they can use to manipulate to con victims. Many reputed financial institutions face losses due to such scams. But, they cannot completely restrict the criminals, who are often representatives operating from overseas, beyond the local legislation. 

They send emails impersonating as Ombudsman Service staff or send voicemails or use other methods to persuade the account holders to authorise the transfer of funds where the callers cannot be held accountable as the transactions are authorised.

To avoid risks, victims should be aware of their tactics and be cautious. You can pursue civil action against the fraudsters if you have lost money, but you need evidence to track them. Therefore, you should always keep a copy of all communications that you receive from them. 

With the integration of innovative methods, the regulatory system offers quick solutions to track their actions, and it can help the victim avoid further loss of assets. 

The client should be aware that if the customers have to pay a surcharge for an underpaid post or a fee, the postal department or the Ombudsman will never ask for it on emails or send messages in text format and ask the target to pay through gift cards. 

Also, one can use the mobile app systems to track postal deliveries and check the links from government websites that offer simple tracking systems.

 How To Protect Yourself?

• Never give personal details like address, phone numbers and other information unless you know the caller. 

• Never buy gift vouchers to pay penalties if instructed by some anonymous impersonating authorised individuals.

• Most scammers hide their real identity to evade detection. Never divulge secretive information like internet logins or give telephone banking passwords to the representatives on the phone. 

• If you suspect a call from Ombudsman, report it by calling them directly on the authorised numbers.

Many social media sites have no system to restrict the bogus adverts posted on their pages, and many such ads with lucrative deals come up on search engines. Such websites have been advised by the authorities to filter counterfeit. 

However, they state that their systems are not designed to detect fraud automatically because they cannot be identified through current methods. In that case, the tech firm publishing the adverts will have to manually and individually check all ads before publishing. 

Nevertheless, authorities have raised concerns as the search engines get funds through illegitimate ads, and they should be held liable for hurting innocent viewers. Hence the law enforcement agencies have asked the search engines to make sure the adverts are legitimate. 

Of the total crimes, such cases make up over 33 per cent of all, but in general, less than 1 per cent is investigated by the police. The government agents' claim they get at least three to four emails from people in a day asking if the ads are genuine or fake. 

The regulatory agencies see the threat has been growing, and they are trying to find a more effective way to handle it. The consumer groups, law enforcement and industry, are working together to find an alternative solution like recruiting more police and technical people who can provide their services to identify and remove deceitful sites. 

Recently they deployed fully dedicated officers to handle it, though the government introduced an uplifting program. Also, Facebook launched the Scam Ad Alert, where one can report a suspicious advert.