The Prudential Control and Resolution Authority (ACPR) – the French financial services watchdog – announced on Thursday January 18 that it had registered last year on her ” blacklist “ 1,262 sites or entities offering financial products without authorization. For victims, losses can reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of euros. They “belonged to all socio-professional categories”.
There “almost all” fraudulent offers “concerns false loans or savings accounts and, for more than 53% of them, usurps the identity of an establishment or financial intermediary duly authorized to market such products”explains the ACPR in a press release.
Among the files received by the ACPR in 2023, the average loss observed concerning false booklets amounts to 93,000 euros, “with even a file worth 1 million euros”, specified a spokesperson to Agence France-Presse. Concerning false credits, the average loss is 13,000 euros, but can be higher in certain cases, up to 60,000 euros last year.
Increase in scams around financial products
These amounts have been increasing in recent years, as has the number of sites or entities registered on the ACPR blacklist and the proportion of usurpation of authorized professionals. Scammers have a very large potential target of victims, because savings accounts and loans are everyday financial products, deplores the ACPR. Victims, looking for a safe and profitable investment, are given confidence by their main characteristics: absence of risk of loss of capital and availability of funds.
The ACPR is also alerting savers this year to “the proliferation of false crowdfunding contracts offering to invest in projects relating to renewable energies, nursing homes, rooms in student residences or even in car parks equipped with electric charging stations”.
In 2023, forty-six fraudulent websites or emails will be registered in this category, compared to twenty in 2022. The ACPR, sometimes supported by the Financial Markets Authority, regularly warns the general public against the increase in scams. around financial products.