INVESTMENT FRAUD OCCURS MAINLY VIA ONLINE TRADING PLATFORMS

This article was first published by Financial Services and Markets Authority 

One of the tasks entrusted to the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) is to combat unlawful activities in financial investments. In July, the FSMA published a new quarterly dashboard with statistics and an overview of the main trends regarding investment fraud. Today, it publishes the dashboard for the third quarter of 2022.

This edition of the dashboard focuses more specifically on the following elements:

• The previously identified fraud trends tend to be confirmed: in 2022, the two main fraud phenomena are fraudulent trading platforms and fake credit scams.
• In the third quarter of 2022, almost 50% of the questions were received by the FSMA about fraud related to fraudulent trading platforms.
• The collaboration between the FSMA and the judicial authorities resulted in 234 fraudulent websites being blocked since the beginning of the year.
• September saw a sharp increase in the number of fraud notifications received by the FSMA. The majority thereof were submitted by Dutch-speaking consumers, which could mean that, currently, fraudsters are specifically targeting the Dutch-speaking public.