Being Cloned Impersonation Fraud

This week we have seen warnings from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of up to £78m being stolen from investors by fraudsters that ‘cloned’ regulated financial services firms during 2020 pandemic lockdown and continue to do so.

It is not just firms being ‘cloned’ and impersonated it is also consumers being impersonated to fool businesses.

Equally, a few weeks we covered a story where a financial firm’s client had been ‘cloned’ i.e. being impersonated using identity fraud.  Clone Client emailing the financial firm to cash in some investments and meanwhile, the fraudster also impersonating the financial firm by emailing the client and saying there has been a mistake and funds that will be sent to their bank account in ‘error’ should be returned to ‘ the following bank account details’.  In short, both adviser and client were ‘cloned’ resulting in the fraudster getting away with it and the financial firm being ordered to pay compensation by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft, Cloning and Impersonation

1. Is correspondence between you and a firm out of the ordinary – does it follow normal patterns?  If it just feels different, it probably is.
2. Either client or firm won’t talk to each you – it must be EMAIL Only
3. The tone, language and grammar of written correspondence is not normal, it is less friendly, it is riddled with minor errors.
4. Addresses, emails and contact numbers have changed
5. Bank account details have changed

Impersonation and cloning are going to become more prevalent and sophisticated until other physical routes to verify our identities are made ‘mainstream’.