Webinar 3049/2023/WEB: Illegal sale of financial services

The illegal online sale of investment services paired with aggressive and deceptive marketing is a great threat to the European Union. What is happening? Specialised organised crime groups establish companies and networks in jurisdictions where their activity is well-protected and they offer fraudulent financial services to the global public through the internet. The fraudsters develop their promotion and advertising methods quickly and use physiologically refined processes to attract and involve their targets. The globalisation and digitalisation of the financial market helps them as more and more traditional, honest financial players offer investment services legally. It is thus getting easer to mistake a decent financial actor for a fraudster.

The consequences are dire. Tens of thousands of victims fell to sophisticated misleading techniques every year causing severe financial loss to citizens and companies. The large-scale fraud schemes also cause remarkable indirect damage by undermining fair market competition and shaking the public trust in the financial sector and state regulatory policies. Smaller scale frauds might not have that overall effect but still impoverish and bankrupt decent citizens, families depriving them from their life-savings.

From police perspective these are well-organised, multifaceted, white-collar and cross-border crimes with strong links with international money laundering. It is challenging to investigate these cases with hundreds/thousands of victims where suspect companies are established in non-cooperative jurisdictions.

The overall objective of this webinar is to bolster the fight against illegal sale of financial services by sharing experience from the dedicated Europol unit and Guardia di Finanza investigations.