INVESTMENT SCAMS: Investment Cold Calls
There’s nothing warm about cold calls…
Cold callers often contact households, posing as investment professionals like stock brokers or financial advisers. They will talk to you about legitimate investments, such as your superannuation, share portfolios, mortgages and real estate. This feigns legitimacy, and convinces people they are a trustworthy financial services organisation. The scammers claim that what they are offering is low-risk, with high-returns. They’ll often suggest investments in overseas countries, foreign currency trading or options trading.
In many cases, these scammers are operating from another country. This means that they will not have an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL). An AFSL is a legal obligation for financial services operators in Australia. Before proceeding, make sure you ask them to provide proof of theirs! These scammers will insist that they do not need to have obtained an AFSL, and reassure the victims that they are affiliated with well known and genuine companies. They will also try to convince you that they have been approved by regulators such as ASIC. This is in fact not the case.
If the scammer is operating from another country, and does not hold an AFSL, it makes it tremendously difficult, if not impossible for Australian regulators to help you recover any financial losses.
To best combat this type of scam, we believe people should be informed, so that they do not make this unfortunate mistake. There are stories upon stories of people experiencing hardship, as they have fallen victim to these types of scams. If you have read this article, make sure you share this knowledge among your friends and family, so that they too can be educated on what to look out for with investment scams. People experience tremendous emotional turmoil when they are faced with losing large sums of money. By sharing this knowledge, you could be saving someone you love, a lot of heartache.
