Be vigilant against London Gold scams

Even though the old trick works as long as someone believes in it, fraudsters do employ various methods to target their victims, from the traditional cold calls, to using the internet to set their traps.

• Cold calls

  The Elderly are likely to be more susceptible to fraudsters. When fraudsters target a potential victim, they would not explicitly persuade the victim to invest in London Gold at the beginning. Instead, they would spend time to establish a relationship with their targets. After fraudsters have befriended their targets, the targets will be persuaded to open an investment account.

• Questionnaires and surveys

  Fraudsters obtain contact details and background information of targets through questionnaires. They then use the information to promote the London Gold investments that are in fact scams.

• Online traps

  Fraudsters will pretend to be London Gold investment experts. To lure people into their traps, they would post pictures and information showing their success on forums and social networks to entice victims. Fraudsters may use fictitious pictures of beautiful women as their profile photos to make friends in various social apps. They will then trick their targets to invest in London Gold. Fraudsters may pretend to be hosting an investment competition for London Gold, using attractive prizes and substantial money rewards to lure victims to open investment accounts.

After they have successfully lured the victims to open trading accounts, fraudsters would make every attempt, e.g. claiming to be able to gain high returns within a very short time, to ask the victims to sign third party authorisations to control and manipulate their investment accounts. Fraudsters may ask victims for the usernames and passwords of the online investment accounts to trade London Gold.

• Beware of online "experts"

  Do your homework and do not rely on "trust" when investing. Do not believe in the investment tips that these "experts" offer too easily.

• Be careful when allowing third-party authorisation

  Many complaints and scams on London Gold trading are related to giving a third-party authorisation to someone (such as a broker) to take control and manipulate the account. Third-party authorisation is not necessary for London Gold trading. If a broker convinces you to give him consent and authorisation, you must consider if you actually need to do so, understand the content of the authorisation, and consider the risks involved. Furthermore, investors should not disclose their online trading account usernames or passwords to any third-party.

• Pay attention to the variants of London Gold scams

  Besides London Gold, fraudsters can also ride on investments of other precious metals, such as the Renminbi Kilobar Gold contracts, 99 Tael Gold Contracts, HKD Kilo Gold contracts and paper gold, etc. to carry out their fraudulent deeds.

• Promoting anti-scam information

  Although London Gold scams are nothing new, in real life situations, not everyone knows about scams and how to prevent them. In recent years, some Mainlanders and retirees became victims of London Gold scams. Help friends and families to reduce the chance of being tricked by sharing with them the latest forms of scams and keeping them informed about how to prevent falling into fraud traps.