{"id":30903,"date":"2025-07-29T10:19:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T09:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/2025\/07\/29\/investors-warned-as-cloning-scams-surge\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T08:45:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T07:45:21","slug":"investors-warned-as-cloning-scams-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/2025\/07\/29\/investors-warned-as-cloning-scams-surge\/","title":{"rendered":"Investors warned as cloning scams surge"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-table\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td>Nearly a quarter of brand cloning scams succeed, costing investors \u00a32.7m in H2 2024&nbsp;<\/td><td>AI is fuelling more convincing scam tactics that mimic real firms\u00a0<\/td><td>Verifying legitimacy before investing is more important than ever&nbsp;<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong>Cloning scams are now the top fraud threat to people wanting to invest, a new study shows<\/strong><strong><sup>1<\/sup><\/strong><strong>. The Investment Association (IA) said there were 478 cases of firms being impersonated by fraudsters in the second half of 2024 alone.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>Nearly a quarter of these scams succeeded, costing investors \u00a32.7m. Advances in artificial intelligence are likely to make future cloning attempts even more convincing and sophisticated in nature.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>These brand cloning scams involve criminals creating a nearly identical duplicate of a genuine website or email, or creating a fake WhatsApp group, using a reputable company\u2019s logo and brand, to trick people into parting with their money, thinking they\u2019re making a genuine investment.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>Regulatory and Financial Crime Expert at the IA, Adrian Hood, commented, \u201c<em>Criminals will use a variety of means to trick people into parting with their money\u2026 That\u2019s why we\u2019re urging consumers to stay vigilant. With cloning scams topping the list of threats, consumers should double check whether websites or emails are legitimate before transferring any money. The growth of AI is likely to see increasingly sophisticated scams, with criminals better able to mimic legitimate firms<\/em>.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><sup>1<\/sup>The Investment Association, 2025&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong>The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. The past is not a guide to future performance and past performance may not necessarily be repeated.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly a quarter of brand cloning scams succeed, costing investors \u00a32.7m in H2 2024&nbsp; AI is fuelling more convincing scam tactics that mimic real firms\u00a0 Verifying legitimacy before investing is more important than ever&nbsp; Cloning scams are now the top fraud threat to people wanting to invest, a new study shows1. The Investment Association (IA) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,89],"tags":[],"hd_content_source":[116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30996,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30903\/revisions\/30996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30903"},{"taxonomy":"hd_content_source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hd_content_source?post=30903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}