Daily fraud update: 18th March

Chris Lee

 

Hello and welcome to your daily foreign exchange and cryptocurrency fraud news update.

Bank in Mozambique investigated over alleged fraud

A bank in the sub-Saharan African country of Mozambique has been referred to law enforcement officials over claims that it engaged in a range of fraud types.

“Bank Invest”, as the allegedly fraudulent bank is known, was investigated by officials.

According to the local press, the bank – which is owned by a person named Arcelio Tivane – was found to have been working “without due authorisation, operations legally reserved to credit institutions, and other institutions authorised to attract deposits”.

Tivane supposedly previously operated a scheme called the “Ninth Millionaire Formula Workshop”.

In this scheme, people were apparently advised that they could learn about “the day-to-day routines used by ordinary people to attain wealth, prosperity and well-being, to start up your business by digital marketing, and to get rid of debts”.

It is alleged that the so-called bank known as “Bank Invest” had offered its customers the opportunity to make handsome returns which began as relatively low as 3% and rose to as high as 50%.

It is also believed that the period of time in which it claimed the returns would be on offer would materialise in as long as a year or even as short as a month.

The central bank in the country is now warning members of the general public to be careful – and said that they should ensure they do not commit to contracts which are “of an illegal and fraudulent nature”.

The move from the Bank of Mozambique came after it acted against another institution which it accused of operating fraudulently.

This institution, called E2U Investment, allegedly attempted to attract customers on the basis that they could invest in everything from cryptocurrencies to the local fiat currency.

In some cases, this institution offered a “variable interest rate” of up to 90% in around three months.

As a result, the Bank of Mozambique warned people that there was ”vulnerability and frauds linked to crypto-currencies and financial intermediation, in the form of brokerage or other financial operations”.

Local government in New York: we want virus action plan

The local government in the US state of New York has written to crypto firms that they must issue an emergency plan to mitigate against risks in response to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

The Department of Financial Services in New York told crypto firms that it must develop what was referred to in the specialist press as an “emergency preparedness plan”.

This will need to be submitted within 30 days of the date of March 10th.

According to the letter, which was published on the internet, “COVID-19 has already had adverse economic effects domestically and globally”.

“An institution’s preparedness plan should be sufficiently flexible to effectively address a range of possible effects that could result from an outbreak of COVID-19, and reflect the institution’s size, complexity and activities”, it added.

Firms ought to conduct an “assessment of potential increased risk of cyber-attacks and fraud due to an outbreak”, it said.


Chris Lee

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