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Have you fallen for a fake ad?

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4/8/22, 12:00 PM BREAKING

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SPECIAL REPORT: Martin

Lewis’s Latest Investment Has

Experts in Awe And Big Banks

Terrified

British citizens are already raking in millions of pounds from home using this"wealth loophole" - but is it legitimate?

Martin Lewis comes out with new secret investment that's making hundreds of people in UK very rich

(BBC NEWS) made a name for himself as a- English journalist and television presenter Martin Lewis has brash straight-talker who doesn’t mind being

honest about how he makes his money.

There are still

thousands of

scam ads on

Facebook

subject of an FCA warning in June 2020. It

claims to have $1.2 billion under manage-

ment and offers investments that return a

minimum of 228 per cent a year through

cryptocurrency.

Facebook does not disclose how much

companies are paying to advertise on the

site. Older adverts that are labelled “inac-

tive” on the Facebook Ad Library contain

details on how much they cost and to

how many people they were shown.

Facebook received £200 in June 2020

from one inactive advert for investments

promising returns of up to 20 per cent a

year, and helped it reach up to 30,000

people in a month. Advertisers are able to

specify demographic details of the audi-

ence they want to reach and most users

who were shown this advert were men

under the age of 45.

At prime minister’s questions on

Wednesday, the Conservative MP

Anthony Browne said: “Financial scams

are now the most common form of crime,

harming millions of families every year.

Most are enabled by online platforms

such as Facebook and Google that make

vast profits from advertising fraudsters.

“Companies that profit from promot-

ing fraud should help to pay the cost of

fraud and... compensate the victims

that they help to create”.

The prime minister said: “We are going

to look at exactly how we could make that

kind of measure work. It’s important that

we proceed with care and get it right.”

Last year Google adopted a policy

of only allowing financial companies

authorised by the FCA to advertise on its

platform. Meta has promised to follow

suit with Facebook and Instagram, but

has not yet.

The banks say Facebook is now the big-

gest problem when it comes to online

Rishi Sunak can’t

solve your cost

of living

crunch...

but you can

M

y annual rail season ticket costs

£3,900 or (as I like to torment

myself ) about 30p for every

minute I’m actually on a train.

When I come to renew it this

year it will cost about £4,080.

So far I’ve not been that worried

about rising energy prices: it’s spring

and the heating has been off for more

than a month now. We are minimal car

users and we’ve always been economical

with our food shopping, although I did

take a sharp intake of breath when the

cost of my favourite bread went up.

I can swap to a cheaper loaf, though,

we can drive a little less and shout at the

kids a little more to turn off their

bedroom lights.

Everyone’s inflation crunch is

different — mine is my train fare. I can’t

escape it.

We’re still lucky, though. Others are

having a much tougher time, and so the

cost-of-living squeeze has led to many

earnest voices shouting that Rishi Sunak

has to do something.

But does he have to? Is it really the

chancellor’s job to provide us with

lifelong insurance from the effects of a

war and a virus that continues to hold up

global supplies of commodities and

parts?

If you look at governments across the

world there is no unilateral agreement

on how to help households, largely

because each economy operates

differently and has unique

demographics and social habits.

France has capped power bill rises to

4 per cent, because its energy firm EDF

is mainly owned by the state, and cut

petrol by 15 cents a litre. That’s going to

lumber EDF with €26 billion of losses.

With its sprawling welfare state (and an

election to win) the government has also

handed low-income households €100.

Germany has cut petrol by 30 cents a

litre and diesel by 14 cents, but only for

three months and largely to the benefit

of wealthy households. It has announced

90 days of unlimited public transport on

buses, trams and the underground for

€9 a month, and there has been a one-off

energy handout of €300 to taxpayers,

plus extra for those with children and

low earners.

Spain has cut VAT on energy bills from

21 per cent to 10 per cent until the end of

June, and cut other taxes on electricity

from 7 per cent to 0.5 per cent. A

reminder: VAT on our energy bills is only

5 per cent.

New Zealand has probably gone the

furthest — raising the minimum wage,

halving the cost of public transport — but

it would, wouldn’t it?

Over here we’ve had a 5p-a-litre

reduction on fuel duty, and it’s hardly

the chancellor’s fault that this

substantial cut was barely noticed at the

pumps. Every household will also get a

£200 loan to help lower their energy bill

and many people objected to that.

In July we get a £360 cut to national

insurance (although this does come after

a 1.25 per cent hike thanks to the health

and social care levy, which was

announced before inflation took grip).

These all help, but how do you go

further? How do you financially assist

someone whose food bill is the problem,

or someone else where petrol is the

crunch point? Public transport

discounts are a tax break for city

dwellers, though would help with the

crazy cost of some rural bus routes.

You could increase universal credit,

perhaps restoring the £20-a-week uplift

we had in the pandemic, but how you

would end this is troublesome, and it

does not help working families. Cutting

green levies on energy bills is practically

impossible without adding them to the

general tax take of the UK. A windfall tax

sounds politically appealing, but raises

more questions than it answers.

Printing free money and handing it

out is always a populist suggestion, but it

also fuels inflation and does little to

incentivise better habits, which, frankly,

our bloated consumer economy needs

and can cope with. I suspect that the

chancellor knows that many households

have scope to spend a little less, turn

down the heating more often, walk a

little more.

Whatever universal action you try

also gives tax breaks to the very wealthy,

which seems a waste of money.

There is no easy answer because

inflation hits everyone differently, plus

we’re only at the start of this.

The chancellor should show

prudence and caution. He should wait

and see what happens next. In the

meantime, it’s up to us to scrimp a little

here, spend a little less there because

only you hold the answer to your

personal inflation crunch.

@jimconey

James Coney

We all

have a

different

inflation

crunch

MONEY

Follow us on Twitter @ST_Money

BIG LOANS,

HIGH RENTS,

NO JOBS:

MEET THE

PANDEMIC

GRADUATES

PAGES 12-13

£

A

dverts for get-rich-quick bit-

coin scams, fake investment

bonds that promise to pay

7 per cent interest a year and

unregulated cryptocurrency

and foreign exchange trad-

ing schemes are regularly

being posted on Facebook.

Over the past few weeks

Money found more than a

dozen adverts on Facebook and Insta-

gram that appeared to be scams.

In a bid for greater transparency Face-

book’s parent company, Meta, has pub-

lished a library of all the adverts that are

live on its website and on Instagram.

Money searched the library using terms

such as “investment bonds”, “investment

opportunity” and “crypto investment”.

Among the 738,000 live adverts,

including those for legitimate financial

firms such as HSBC and JP Morgan Asset

Management, we found the Money Sav-

ing Expert, Martin Lewis, being used in

adverts for a fake get-rich-quick bitcoin

scheme. Three years ago Lewis settled a

£3 million defamation case against Face-

book after thousands of scam adverts

using his face and fake endorsements

were posted on the site.

This latest advert, posted on April 8,

offered the chance to turn £200 into

£25,000 in four weeks. It linked to a fake

BBC story in which Lewis supposedly

told This Morning presenter Holly Wil-

loughby about a cryptocurrency trading

program called Bitcoin Code that could

“transform anyone into a millionaire”.

The story invited readers to “Change

your life today.”

Lewis said: “Lots of these adverts are

For as little as £200 criminals are posting adverts for

fake savings schemes. George Nixon investigates

How Facebook

became the

friend of

fraudsters

in Suffolk. It linked to a website called

Invest Anglia, which also offered the

chance to earn 9 per cent investing in

the final phase of a development site in

Norwich — but the housing developer

behind the site said it had no knowledge

of Invest Anglia.

Invest Anglia’s website no longer

works and the company is not registered

with the FCA.

On April 14 two adverts appeared on

Facebook and Instagram for cryptobene-

fits.net. They encouraged users to stop

“missing out on a lifetime opportunity”

and invest in cryptocurrency. The web-

site advertised a bitcoin mining opera-

tion where investors can make returns of

up to 100 per cent within 72 hours.

Cryptocurrency trading is not regu-

lated by the FCA, which means inves-

tors have no redress under the

Financial Services Compensa-

tion Scheme if the company

goes bust. But trading plat-

forms that wish to operate

in the UK must be regis-

tered with the FCA to

ensure they meet anti-

money laundering

rules. Any company

not on an FCA regis-

ter should not be

doing business in

the UK, the regula-

tor has said.

The Cryptobene-

fits website displays

a Companies House

document purport-

ing to be from the

official UK register.

However, the docu-

ment also says the com-

pany is registered in

“USA and Washington

DC”, and goes on to refer to

“Companies House Florida”,

neither of which exist.

The company’s Facebook page

has since been taken down.

Between March 18 and April 8, 430

adverts were placed by the Cyprus-based

firm Prosperi.io; most of them about how

trading bitcoin is a way of making quick

money. One advert posted on April 7

claimed you could earn $1,310 in 30 days

by trading cryptocurrency. Customers

were offered a discounted seven-day trial

for the platform for $10, after which the

fee was $49.99 a month. The company is

not on the FCA’s register. Facebook tool

down the firm’s page all adverts after

being contacted by Money. However

adverts for a company called Prosperliio,

with the same website, have now

appeared.

Adverts for other companies claimed

to offer guaranteed returns of up to

300 per cent through foreign exchange

and cryptocurrency signals trading,

when you are given tips on which shares,

currencies or cryptocurrencies to buy

or sell. Trading signals can be classed

as regulated advice and offering this

without authorisation from the FCA is a

criminal offence.

These adverts linked to websites with

hardly any contact details or information

about the businesses. One advert for

Crypto Copy-Trading, posted on Face-

book and Instagram on April 14, adver-

tised “daily trading signals from reliable

professional traders” that would be “sure

to earn over 300 per cent return of invest-

ment”. It linked to a chat on Telegram, an

encrypted message service.

Its Facebook page was taken down

after being reported by Money.

The FCA has issued warnings for 26

unauthorised or fraudulent firms operat-

ing on Facebook since January 2020: ten

appear to still be active.

Earnsured Asset Management was the

still happening and it’s the bane of my

life. It shouldn’t be my job to hold these

companies to account, there’s only so

much we can do. It’s Facebook and

others that make money from the

scammers — they need to take responsi-

bility. And we need strong regulation,

laws and enforcement of those laws.”

The advert has since been removed

by Facebook.

Meta is under pressure from regula-

tors, MPs and banks to tackle fraudulent

adverts that can lead to investors losing

tens of thousands of pounds.

The Online Harms Bill, introduced in

Parliament in March, will make tech

companies liable for fraudulent content

and adverts on their platforms. On

Wednesday Boris Johnson told the House

of Commons that the government was

looking at ways to make online giants

such as Facebook and Google compen-

sate the victims of fraud.

Adverts on Facebook appear in a feed

among posts from the user’s friends.

They are marked as “sponsored”.

Adverts for fraudulent schemes usually

contain links to a website set up by the

scammers. Anyone giving their details to

the linked site are then often targeted by

“salesmen” who convince them to

plough increasingly large sums into fake

investments.

In the first half of 2021 £107.7 million

was lost to investment scams in the UK,

up from £20.8 million in the first half of

2018. Investors are often enticed by social
      media adverts and the fraudsters then
      convince them further by using fake
      documents and contact details and by
      cloning the websites of legitimate firms.

The scammers are rarely caught.

Less than half of the money lost in the

first six months of 2021 was returned to

victims. Banks often refuse compensa-

tion because they judge the victim to

have been negligent. And it is usually

difficult to recover the money because

criminals quickly transfer it out of the

original receiving account.

The Financial Conduct Authority

(FCA) keeps a warning list of unautho-

rised and fraudulent companies. We

found many of these posting adverts for

investment bonds on Facebook and

Instagram.

The FCA warned about the firm

Income Bonds UK in September 2020

and the company Bondary in June 2021.

Bondary posted Facebook adverts as

recently as April 26 offering 7 per cent

returns from “UK leading investment

firms”.

We also found an advert posted on

April 1 which offered investors the

chance to earn 12 per cent interest by

funding the development of new homes

Companies that

profit from

promoting fraud

should pay the

cost of fraud

fraud. TSB, which has more than five mil-

lion customers, said 70 per cent of cases

of investment fraud reported to it

between January and March this year

started on Facebook or Instagram, either

through adverts or victims being directly

messaged on the platforms. Paul Davis,

TSB’s director of fraud prevention, said:

“For too long, online platforms have

allowed scams to fester, regularly trick-

ing the people who place trust in their

services out of life-changing sums.”

Facebook and Google say their aim

is to stop fraud happening in the

first place and it should not have to

pay compensation.

After being contacted by Money, Meta

took down 11 Facebook pages that it said

violated its policies.

The FCA said: “We need social media

firms to step up to tackle the dangerous

content and scam ads they are paid to

carry. We have had positive conversa-

tions with Google, which has agreed

not to accept ads from any financial

firm that is not regulated by the FCA. We

now expect commitments from Meta and

others to be turned into clear timetables

for action.”

Meta said: “Promoting financial scams

is against our policies and we’re dedicat-

ing significant resources to tackling this

industry-wide issue on and off our plat-

forms. We encourage our community to

report anything they think doesn’t

belong on our platforms.”

Martin Lewis

and Holly

Willoughby

were used in a

bitcoin scam