Gold investment scammers, like other types of scammers, are (unfortunately for victims) intelligent, sophisticated, and cunning and will use a variety of tactics and persuasion techniques to convince you to part with your hard-earned money. However, there are warning signs that you can look out for to protect yourself and any friends or loved ones from being the next scam victim.

Red flags associated with gold investment scams include:

• Being offered an amount of gold that seems too good to be true – meaning it probably is. You can check the current price of gold online
• Being pressured into make a decision once you have expressed an interest in a gold investment opportunity; this will usually be as result of a ‘cold approach’ through email, phone, a direct message (DM) on social media or aggressive social media advertising, with the aim of making you act quickly without doing any further research, getting specialist advice or running the idea by trusted friends and family. Genuine brokers will not act in this way.
• A lack of substance behind flashy websites, social media and marketing material, for example, little to no information about the company or its authorisation to trade in the UK. You can check the regulation status of any company or firm offering gold investments with the Financial Conduct Authority(FCA), the City watchdog in charge of regulating the financial industry.

The main thing to remember when considering investing in gold is to make sure you do your own research before parting with any money and to remember that if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

Authorised push payment (APP) fraud is a type of financial fraud where victims are persuaded or coached to send money from their bank account to scammers. The victims are encouraged to authorise transactions, often bypassing their bank’s security systems, for a purpose that they believe at the time to be legitimate, such as investing in gold, paying a bill, or sending money to a romantic partner.

As the transactions take place using the ‘Faster Payments’ system, the scammer can access the money immediately and will move it on again to another account, usually overseas, where it becomes difficult – if not impossible – to trace. Often the money has been moved on before the victim even realises they’ve been scammed.

If you believe that you are the victim of a gold investment scam, the first thing to do is report the fraud to your bank and Action Fraud, the National Reporting Centre for Fraud and Cyber Crime.

Your bank should investigate the report and, in some cases, may offer a refund or compensation. However, as the bank account holder has authorised the payments, some banks will refuse to reimburse, placing the blame with the customer.

If your bank refuses to reimburse you following a gold scam, but you believe that it could have done more to prevent the scam from taking place, other steps can be taken to try and recover your money.

Banks in the UK have a duty of care to protect their customers from sending payments to scammers from their bank accounts. As financial industry and security experts, in order to detect, prevent, and stop fraud taking place on their accounts, banks should:

• Monitor customer accounts to counter risks.
• Have robust systems to identify unusual transactions or other indicators that customers, particularly those who are vulnerable such as the elderly or financially naïve, may be at risk of fraud.
• Make additional checks or decline suspicious payments to protect their customers.
• Stay aware of common and ever evolving bank transfer scam tactics.

Where banks have not sufficiently upheld their responsibilities, resulting in customers losing money to scams, the complaint can be referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) for an independent investigation. FOS is a Government-backed initiative responsible for settling disputes between consumers and financial institutions.

Recovering lost funds from a gold investment scam can be complex, difficult and time-consuming. Therefore, working with experienced professionals specialising in fraud recovery is essential.

We have a specialist team with many years of experience in successfully dealing with claims against banks with FOS. We understand the complex legal arguments and defences that your bank may raise, and our experienced team, combined with our efficient digital case management systems, allows us to proactively pursue your claim and get the best possible results, all on a no-win, no-fee basis.

The specialist fraud team at TLW Solicitors are helping many clients recover refunds on a no-win, no-fee basis. If you have a claim, we will deal with your claim from start to finish, whilst keeping you up to date as the case progresses.

The steps in the claims process are:

1. Submit your claim with us by completing either the online claim form, request a callback, telephone our office, or email us using the contact details provided.
2. A member of the fraud team will discuss your claim with you and advise whether you may have a claim that we can deal with.  If we can assist you, we will send you our welcome pack which contains useful information on what to expect throughout your claim as well as details of what information we’ll need from you.
3. You will be assigned a case handler. If following an initial assessment of your case we think you have a claim, we will be in touch to go through the next steps. If we don’t think you have a claim, we will provide our reasons why so that you may consider other options.
4. Your case handler will ask for and review any additional documentation needed to progress your claim, this will include contacting the banks involved on your behalf. You will be kept up to date by email and phone calls if required.
5. Depending on the circumstances of your case and due to a wide range of factors outside of our control, making a refund claim can take several months to complete – as your case progresses, we will try to give you as much information as possible about the likely timescales. We will continue to update you on your claim, and you will be able to contact your dedicated case handler if there are any issues or concerns.
6. We work on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis, which means that if your claim is unsuccessful, there will be no charge for the work we do.

TLW Solicitors’ APP Fraud team members have been featured in a BBC One series, ‘Northern Justice’ and the BBC’s Morning Live show. Episodes from the Northern Justice programme show how TLW lawyers helped scam victims recover substantial compensation. Full details about the BBC series can be found here.