Being imitated can be either the highest form of flattery or the most damaging!

We have all seen the guys on holiday on the streets and in the markets peddling their fake Louis Vuitton, Mulberry and Prada handbags. Copy DVD’s have also been sold on the streets for a number of years. Nobody for one minute believes that they are the genuine article.

However, a new disturbing trend of scams has emerged as fraudsters are starting to counterfeit the identities of legitimate financial firms and use boiler room tactics to dupe unsuspecting investors out of their hard earned savings.

Unfortunately, the deVere group is one of the companies being fraudulently imitated in a clone scam.

Along with a number of other leading firms, an elaborate scam has taken place where addresses, websites, contact numbers and stationary have all been produced to look very convincing to the unsuspecting public. 

Some investors have been contacted, visited and persuaded to invest in counterfeit investments with fraudsters even adopting the names of legitimate financial advisers.

How long has this been going on? From a brief glance at the FSA now FCA website we can see that a large number of firms have been targeted and warnings issued to the public. 

What can be done about it?

The deVere group work hard to ensure that we protect our client’s interests.  Indeed we recently launched our ‘deVere Group scam’ blog which aims to expose mal practice in financial services.  If you have any doubt that the advice you are receiving is not genuine, then we encourage you to contact deVere direct by emailing [email protected]

It’s a crazy world and that means we all have to vigilant. As a CEO of the deVere group I’m constantly looking of ways to help clients be protected and of course ways to protect the company. Sometimes I think its sad that a company that constantly strives to do the best suffers as a result of false blogs and even people pretending to be us. I guess to use football terminology  some people hate Manchester United and will say all they can to criticise them, while others say in order to be the best you have to copy them. So how do you deal with it, my answer is to constantly try to do the right thing and improve. If you want to be the best Financial Advising company in the world then dealing with false blogs and clones goes with the territory.

A recent FT article lists all the legitimate companies that have been targeted in this elaborate scam.  You can view the article by clicking here.