Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai has raised con­cerns over a ris­ing tide of on­line fraud in T&T, not­ing that cit­i­zens lost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.3 mil­lion be­tween Oc­to­ber 2024 and Sep­tem­ber 2025.

While the to­tal may ap­pear mod­est in ab­solute terms, Howai stressed that the trend is trou­bling and war­rants im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, law en­force­ment, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers.

Speak­ing at a high-lev­el meet­ing con­vened by the Cen­tral Bank yes­ter­day, Howai em­pha­sised the ur­gency of tack­ling the prob­lem be­fore it es­ca­lates fur­ther. The meet­ing brought to­geth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU), the Fraud In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (FIB), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, as well as se­nior of­fi­cials from com­mer­cial banks and con­sumer pro­tec­tion bod­ies. Gov­er­nor Howai high­light­ed that many vic­tims are el­der­ly cit­i­zens, who are fre­quent­ly tar­get­ed through phish­ing emails, fake in­vest­ment schemes, and on­line ro­mance scams. He point­ed out that the scams are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed, and even ex­pe­ri­enced in­di­vid­u­als could be sus­cep­ti­ble.

Be­yond the el­der­ly, he not­ed emerg­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty among women aged 30 to 49 in East and South Trinidad, sug­gest­ing that cer­tain de­mo­graph­ics and ge­o­graph­ic ar­eas may be at high­er risk. Howai said build­ing a de­tailed data­base of fraud cas­es, in­clud­ing de­mo­graph­ic and ge­o­graph­ic trends, will be crit­i­cal to un­der­stand­ing and mit­i­gat­ing the threat.

An­oth­er con­cern raised by Gov­er­nor Howai is the in­con­sis­ten­cy in how com­mer­cial banks re­spond to fraud com­plaints. He ob­served that even with­in the same in­sti­tu­tion, cus­tomers of­ten ex­pe­ri­ence wide­ly dif­fer­ing treat­ment de­pend­ing on the branch or of­fi­cer han­dling the case. He called for a stan­dard­ised frame­work for in­ves­ti­gat­ing in­ci­dents and as­sist­ing vic­tims to en­sure fair­ness, im­prove cus­tomer con­fi­dence, and strength­en the role of the Om­buds­man in re­solv­ing dis­putes.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments com­mer­cial banks have made in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, Howai stressed that stronger col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­for­ma­tion shar­ing are es­sen­tial. He pro­posed the cre­ation of a shared data­base of fraud ty­polo­gies and cas­es to help in­sti­tu­tions and law en­force­ment an­tic­i­pate emerg­ing threats and im­ple­ment tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions.

Gov­er­nor Howai framed the $3.3 mil­lion loss not mere­ly as a fi­nan­cial fig­ure, but as a warn­ing sign of po­ten­tial growth in on­line fraud. He em­pha­sised that as dig­i­tal trans­ac­tions and on­line bank­ing be­come in­creas­ing­ly cen­tral to T&T’s fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem, proac­tive mea­sures are es­sen­tial to pro­tect cit­i­zens, main­tain pub­lic trust, and en­sure a re­silient fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

He con­clud­ed by urg­ing all stake­hold­ers to en­gage open­ly, share ex­per­tise and work col­lec­tive­ly to de­vise strate­gies that en­hance con­sumer pro­tec­tion, re­duce vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and safe­guard the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor from fur­ther fraud.