25 June 2026

By: Emmy Hawker

Senior Reporter, Trustnet

Cloning scams remained the most common fraud facing prospective investors last year, according to new data from the Investment Association (IA), which warned that criminals are increasingly mimicking legitimate firms to steal money.

The IA’s annual fraud statistics, based on incidents reported by member firms, reported that 1,111 cases of brand-cloning scams were identified last year, representing 67% of all reported frauds.

Cloning typically involves criminals creating near-identical versions of genuine websites, emails or WhatsApp groups, using a firm’s branding to convince victims they are dealing with an authorised provider.

This is the second consecutive year in which cloning has been the dominant threat to consumers. As such, the trade body for the investment management industry has urged anyone looking to invest to remain alert to possible cloning scams.

Adrian Hood, regulatory and financial crime expert at the IA, said: “Cloning scams can be highly convincing. That’s why, as more people start investing, it is vital that awareness of these scams grows, too.”

Another risk the IA highlighted was account-takeover fraud, where criminals use stolen personal information to change an investor’s address or payment details and redeem their holdings. There were 251 reports of this in 2025.

Despite the high number of fraud incidents, the IA said both firms and consumers are becoming more effective at limiting the financial impact, with losses falling by 70% year-on-year from £13.1m in 2024 to £3.9m in 2025. Firms prevented a further £19.6m in attempted fraud.

The trade body outlined three key steps for consumers to take when approached with future investment opportunities. First is to stop and check the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) ‘Firm Checker’ to confirm a company is authorised and verify listed email addresses and URLs for any discrepancies.

Next, challenge and question whether the offer could be fake and whether promised returns appear unrealistic.

Lastly, protect yourself and others by contacting the genuine investment provider immediately and report the incident to Report Fraud.

Lucy Castledine, director of consumer investments at the FCA, said: “Fraudsters are ruthless and will stop at nothing to steal your money, including impersonating well-known, authorised firms.

“Every year, people lose life-changing sums to these scams, and the consequences can be devastating.”

Please Note:

This article is provided for information only. The views of the author and any people quoted are their own and do not constitute financial advice. The content is not intended to be a personal recommendation to buy or sell any fund or asset, or to adopt a particular investment strategy. However, the knowledge that professional analysts have analysed a fund or trust in depth before assigning them a rating can be a valuable additional filter for anyone looking to make their own decisions. Past performance is not a reliable guide to future returns. Market and exchange-rate movements may cause the value of investments to go down as well as up. Yields will fluctuate and so income from investments is variable and not guaranteed. You may not get back the amount originally invested. Tax treatment depends of your individual circumstances and may be subject to change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of any investment you should seek professional advice. 

The above article was published by Trustnet. 

This article is very timely, as not only have I once again been contacted by a group claiming to be a well known reputable, global financial institution promoting some ‘special investment opportunities’, but 3 separate clients have also contacted me in the last 2 weeks stating that they have received similar, ‘celebrity endorsed’ investment opportunities.

This is the action that we took to check the legitimacy of the firm:

Verify the website address carefully – The website may look identical to the genuine firm’s site, but the domain name is slightly different.

Check the regulator’s register – Many scammers copy a legitimate firm’s licence number and registration details.

Instead of trusting the information on the website:

Independently contact the real company – Never use the phone number or email contained in the investment proposal.

Instead:

Needless to say, it was obvious that all of the recent contacts from these so called reputable global financial institutions were proven to be fake and would almost certainly end up clients being scammed of their money.

The common saying with proposed investment returns of “If it seems too good to be true…. well, it probably is” serves as a practical warning across human life that exceptional offers promising significant benefits with minimal cost or risk are frequently deceptive or fraudulent

Clients of Ethical offshore Investments can rest assured that we will only allow investments into products and structures that are strictly regulated, which can be independently checked and verified.

We will only use investment managed funds, Exchange Traded Funds (or Products), listed investment trusts from strictly regulated firms, that once again can easily be independently checked and verified.

We promote full disclosure of all investment opportunities to ensure that any client or prospective client is fully aware of the type of investment(s) that has been proposed….. including underlying assets, management style, relevant risk & volatility, past performance as well as total costs.   

Our clients can access a very wide range of managed funds, low cost index Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s), direct shares, bonds, commodities, specialist Structured note investments as well as Crypto based assets via the various Investment Platforms, and will not be subject to additional entry fees or commissions, when doing so with Ethical Offshore Investments.

Lower costs resulting in more of the investment growth staying in your pocket.

Speak with Ethical Offshore Investments to learn how you can save on your investment costs.

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