The Spanish Securities Commission (CNMV) has issued an investor alert after identifying a proliferation of frauds conducted through WhatsApp groups that offer supposed training and investment recommendations from alleged financial experts. The schemes typically steer victims to invest via the fraudsters’ own intermediaries, often in small-cap shares traded on foreign markets with promises of extraordinary short-term gains, and may also direct investors to fraudulent platforms offering products such as foreign exchange, bonds or purported artificial intelligence-managed portfolios. The CNMV describes a common pattern in which scammers impersonate well-known individuals or properly registered financial entities to attract participants, then build confidence through early “successful” investments and encourage victims to recruit others. After trust is established, victims are pushed into a “star” investment and urged to commit as much money as possible, before the share price collapses and most value is lost; victims are then advised to hold or add to positions, removed from the WhatsApp group and the scammers disappear. The CNMV recommends rejecting these offers, verifying identities and information through independent sources, avoiding promises of quick and easy profits, protecting personal data, being suspicious of upfront fees to recover funds or alleged gains, distrusting guaranteed market predictions, and using authorised advisers and the CNMV’s official registers and warnings tools, alongside international alerts compiled by IOSCO.

Original source View in tracker