Crime|“If the amount of fraud at the end of the year remains at the same level, we will probably see a new record amount of funds defrauded from Finns again at the turn of the year”, says Niko Saxholm of Finanssiala.
in Finland operating banks managed to stop 18.2 million euros worth of scams at the beginning of the year, says the industry’s interest organization Finanssiala.
The amount is 14 percent higher than in the beginning of 2023, when banks were able to prevent frauds worth 15.9 million euros. The review includes cases in which banks managed to return to their customers the money taken by fraud.
According to the financial industry, the amount of money taken by scams has also increased during the current year. In January–June, Finns were defrauded of a total of 27.5 million euros.
When the frauds prevented by banks and the money lost by customers are added together, the total amount of frauds in the first half of the year was 45.7 million euros. According to Finanssiala, it is 28 percent more than a year earlier in the same period.
“The methods of fraudsters are diverse and criminals are resourceful and creative. At the core, the goal is to capture information about the payment instrument or payment instrument IDs,” says the director responsible for crime and fraud prevention in the financial sector Niko Saxholm in the bulletin.
Information are lured on the phone and on social media, on the covert websites of banks or online stores that look believable, or by offering investments with “wild” return percentages.
The biggest losses came from phishing scams, which came to the attention of the banks in the amount of 11.7 million euros. The amount also includes so-called fake police scams, in which the fraudster obtains the victim’s payment instrument credentials by pretending to be, for example, an authority or a bank representative.
The next largest group was investment scams, which defrauded 10.9 million euros of Finns’ money. The number increased by 31 percent from a year ago. Saxholm emphasizes that the number of frauds obtained from bank statistics is probably only the tip of the iceberg.
“Victims of investment scams often do not inform the bank that they have been scammed. The actual fraud sometimes takes place, for example, through cryptocurrency brokerage services, in which case it does not come to the attention of the banks. The actual number of investment scams must therefore be at least three times higher.”
Only a positive sign was, according to Finanssiala, “documentary and love scams” in which the amount of money cheated decreased by 42 percent compared to the same period last year. 2.8 million euros were taken from people with documentary and love scams.
The future still does not look bright, when the number of scams is compared to the whole of last year, when Finns were tried to cheat out of funds worth a total of 76.9 million euros.
“If the amount of fraud at the end of the year remains at the same level, we will probably see a new record amount of funds defrauded from Finns again at the turn of the year.”
People of all ages fall victim to scams, and being the target of scams doesn’t look at age, gender or profession either.
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