The T&TSe­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) has is­sued its sev­enth of­fi­cial pub­lic alert urg­ing cit­i­zens to ex­er­cise height­ened cau­tion amid an alarm­ing rise in on­line in­vest­ment scams.

Fraud­sters op­er­at­ing across so­cial me­dia plat­forms and dig­i­tal mes­sag­ing ap­pli­ca­tions are de­ploy­ing in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed tac­tics, in­clud­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, fake in­vest­ment plat­forms, and de­cep­tive per­son­al ac­counts to de­fraud po­ten­tial in­vestors.

The TTSEC, in a re­lease, ex­plained bad ac­tors con­tin­ue to adapt their meth­ods de­spite on­go­ing pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns.

"De­spite the com­mis­sion's on­go­ing pub­lic aware­ness ef­forts and pre­vi­ous warn­ings, scam­mers con­tin­ue to adapt their tac­tics, us­ing fake so­cial me­dia pro­files, im­per­son­ation of le­git­i­mate fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and pro­fes­sion­als, fraud­u­lent in­vest­ment ad­ver­tise­ments, and de­cep­tive on­line com­mu­ni­ca­tions to gain the trust of po­ten­tial vic­tims," it said.

The reg­u­la­to­ry body high­light­ed that scam­mers fre­quent­ly set up fake so­cial me­dia pro­files, im­per­son­ate reg­is­tered fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and run de­cep­tive ad­ver­tise­ments of­fer­ing im­pos­si­ble re­turns, such as promis­es to "earn $30,150 on a $2,000 in­vest­ment in two hours."

"Le­git­i­mate in­vest­ment firms gen­er­al­ly re­quire funds to be de­posit­ed in­to ac­counts held in the name of the com­pa­ny," the TTSEC not­ed, as it ad­vised, "If you are in­struct­ed to send mon­ey to a per­son­al bank ac­count or to an in­di­vid­ual claim­ing to act on be­half of the com­pa­ny, this may be a warn­ing sign of an in­vest­ment scam or oth­er fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty."

The se­cu­ri­ties reg­u­la­tor em­pha­sised that fraud­sters are now re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on ad­vanced tech­niques, such as us­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to cre­ate con­vinc­ing video mes­sages or im­ages of high-rank­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials. Af­ter lur­ing vic­tims through pub­lic posts, scam­mers rou­tine­ly shift con­ver­sa­tions to pri­vate mes­sag­ing ap­pli­ca­tions like What­sApp or Telegram, where in­di­vid­u­als pos­ing as rep­re­sen­ta­tives pres­sure vic­tims in­to mak­ing ur­gent de­posits.

Once a de­posit is made, vic­tims are of­ten grant­ed ac­cess to fab­ri­cat­ed plat­forms show­ing fake, ex­ag­ger­at­ed bal­ances.

When vic­tims at­tempt to with­draw their mon­ey, scam­mers fre­quent­ly de­mand ex­ces­sive with­draw­al fees—some­times ex­ceed­ing TT$1,000—be­fore abrupt­ly cut­ting off com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Fur­ther­more, those who have lost funds face sec­ondary "re­cov­ery scams," where fake re­cov­ery agents re­quest up­front fees un­der the guise of re­triev­ing lost mon­ey.

"Fol­low­ing an ini­tial loss, vic­tims are, in some in­stances, con­tact­ed by per­sons pur­port­ing to be re­cov­ery agents or oth­er pro­fes­sion­als who claim that they can re­cov­er the vic­tims’ funds in ex­change for an up­front pay­ment or fee. In many in­stances, these ap­proach­es may con­sti­tute a con­tin­u­a­tion of the orig­i­nal scheme or a sec­ond scheme tar­get­ing an al­ready vul­ner­a­ble vic­tim," the TTSEC stat­ed.

To pre­vent fi­nan­cial loss, the TTSEC urges mem­bers of the pub­lic to per­form in­de­pen­dent due dili­gence and ver­i­fy all in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties pri­or to trans­fer­ring mon­ey.

Cit­i­zens could check whether an en­ti­ty, in­di­vid­ual, or pro­mot­er is prop­er­ly reg­is­tered with the reg­u­la­tor by vis­it­ing its of­fi­cial web­site.

The com­mis­sion warned that in­vest­ing with en­ti­ties not reg­is­tered un­der the Se­cu­ri­ties Act Chap­ter 83:02 car­ries the risk of los­ing the en­tire in­vest­ment. Sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ties or tips can be di­rect­ly re­port­ed to the Com­mis­sion via email at mar­ket­com­plaints@ttsec.org.tt.