Attractive investments, proposals to save and earn surreal gains, no one is immune to succumbing to offers that promise mountains and wonders in financial matters. Especially since with the Internet, these proposals are developing at high speed. Seniors in particular are the preferred prey of pseudo investment advisers. The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) itself points out this problem which is affecting more and more French people and calls for being very vigilant in the face of these financial scams.
The temptations are great for scammers to imagine scams in financial investments while in the traditional market savings or investment offers bring little return. More and more of them are rushing down this path and no one is safe from falling victim to it. The Financial Markets Authority (AMF) indicates that 28% of French people have already been approached by these pseudo financial professionals and that 5% of them say they have been victims of a scam.
Many, many tempting offers have sprung up online promising to make you big bucks and fast. In particular, you are offered to become a real trader (a merchant on the financial market) and to invest your money on, for example, "Forex", a market where currencies from all over the world are exchanged but which is not regulated, unlike other financial markets, i.e. it is subject to permanent price variations.
Other trading instruments such as "binary options" are also offered. But beware, these allow you to speculate on a security over a very short period of time with the enormous risk of losing all your money thus invested at the start, or even more, in a few minutes.
No one can improvise as a trader and all these online offers that are more of a scam put you at great risk, especially if the incentive sites in this area do not have any official authorization to operate.
Many atypical investments promise exceptional financial returns. This is often the case when you are offered to invest in diamonds, wine, stamps or even renewable energies. These types of investments show exceptional returns on investments but very rarely the great risks they entail.
People can also canvass you at home or on the phone to offer you extremely profitable investments that no one knows about and that we reserve for you as a "privileged" client.
Caution is required in the face of all the profitable and magical investments, which have nothing to do with the market, that we can offer you. With regard to online sites that offer you to become a trader in a few minutes, at the risk of losing all your money, and which are frequently pretexts to divert your money in the end for the benefit of real crooks, often located abroad, the AMF provides a list of sites not authorized to offer trading, as well as the companies that offer you these scams. In any case, avoid at all costs the operations that are offered to you on "Forex" and "binary options". And flee the insistent canvassing of these false financial actors.
If you are approached at home or on the phone by a so-called financial professional who offers to invest your money with a high and rapid financial return, beware first of all if the person is too insistent, pressures, but also is very friendly with you. Then, don't sign anything if she doesn't want to receive you in a professional room, if she doesn't ask you seriously about your investor profile and your savings needs and if she insists that you quickly subscribe to her offer.
In any case, before deciding to invest your money in attractive investments, check with the AMF if the company offering you these magical returns has a registration number with this authority. If this is not the case, it is an unauthorized company to practice in the financial field that must be avoided at all costs.
If you think you have been the victim of a financial investment scam, you can contact a dedicated "Info Scams" number on 0 805 805 817.
