Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Online scamming as easy as 1-2-3
Customers lured in by Google ads selling 8% ‘Post Office’ deal
CONDITIONS could hardly be better for investment scammers.
Rock-bottom interest rates mean that many savers want alternatives to bank accounts, and crooks are just waiting for them to search online.
The perfect storm is completed by the speed at which dodgy investment websites are set up and then promoted by Google, and the fact the regulator is always a step behind.
I dipped my toe into the shark pool this week by searching for Post Office bonds.
The first hit, above the official Post Office site, was a Google ad for ukpremierbonds.com, which promised that your savings will be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
It offered a range of bonds from trusted outlets, including a Post Office one paying 8% interest.
No such product exists. The highest rate for a genuine Post Office bond is 0.5%.
Besides the fake bond, there were plenty of red flags that Google should have spotted before accepting payment to promote this site. It does not give any company details or phone number, uses a fake address and is a carbon copy of other recent scam sites.
Ukbondmarket.com offered the same non-existent 8% Post Office bond and carried the same stock picture of a young family on its home page.
On February 9 it was added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s consumer alert list, but I saw it still being promoted by Google ads four days later.
Both of these sites have cut and pasted the same testimonials, though there was an intriguing blunder on UK Bond Market.
This has someone called Jake
Commande saying: “Extremely happy with the services offered by UK Bond Value. I have been working with them for more than three years and the results makes me trust them 100% every time.”
Who are UK Bond Value? Jake Commande was supposed to be endorsing UK Bond Market.
The answer is that UK Bond Value is yet another scam site – one that was added to the FCA alert list on
February 3. It was also promoted by Google ads and offered the fictional 8% Post Office bond.
The conmen were in such a hurry to get their new site up and running that they forgot to change the business name used in the bogus testimonial. As for all these sites having a happy customer of three years standing, none of them existed last year, yet alone three years ago.
Bond expert Mark Taber warns
that scam websites like these are being allowed to operate with impunity. “Many of the sites are run by Uk-based unauthorised lead generators in breach of financial promotion, data protection and business names laws,” he said.
“Yet the FCA has never prosecuted a financial promotions offence.”
A Google spokesperson insisted that it removes ads that break its rules, saying: “We take dishonest business practices and misleading ads very seriously and consider them to be a violation of our policies, and recently updated our policies to enable verification of businesses promoting financial services in the UK.”
The Post Office says it contacts website owners and domain providers when it spots suspect websites.
“There are an increasing number of comparison sites with inaccurate and misleading information,” it warned.
“The simplest advice is that if a savings rate looks much higher than the typical rate others are offering, then it is probably too good to be true.”
If a rate is far higher than others, then it’s too good to be true