Apparently almost £200m of pension savings were stolen by fraudsters over the past year.
The FCA investigated 157 attempts to clone companies with household names by firms having their names used and websites cloned.
A cold-calling ban will not stop criminals – especially those operating from overseas. But it will stop those operating on the fringes of legality.
More importantly it would allow regulators, government and industry to send a simple unequivocal message: All cold calls are scams. Hang up and feel free to use whatever colourful language springs to mind.
Cloning is a more complex issue. If an investor believes the contact is from a company they already deal with how can they know it is legitimate?
It seems that in some cases when large sums are moving from a client’s investments not enough questions are being asked and not enough advice given.
Companies must understand they are not just protecting their clients, their corporate reputation is on the line.
It is one thing to be targeted by cyber criminals, it is another to be seen as easy pickings.
Perhaps it needs something to focus minds – such as making investment firms automatically cough up at least 50 per cent of any loss in every fraud case unless they demonstrate beyond all doubt that they took every feasible step to prevent the fraud.
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Morbid details
I was intrigued to see that a man found guilty of conspiring to defraud a funeral plan company of more than £120,000 was given a three-month curfew from 9pm to 6am.
Was the judge concerned that the crook might progress from funeral plan fraud to grave robbery? We can only speculate.
Tony Hazell writes for the Daily Mail's Money Mail section
