Recovery Fraud Scams provide Wrongdoers with a second bite of the Cherry

The continuous rise of financial fraud in all its forms is creating a detrimental effect by causing harm across all sections of society. The wrongdoers swiftly adapt to new opportunities to defraud and the global regulating authorities and law enforcement agencies are finding it a challenge to monitor and police the new scams as they appear.

Recovery fraud is rife. This reprehensible fraud targets individuals who have already been victims of financial fraud for a second time purporting to assist in the recovery of the victims’ lost money. The fraudsters are fully aware of their victims’ situation having previously defrauded them.

Joanna Bailey commented “When the victims are approached they are often told by the wrongdoers that they represent an organisation that has been made aware of their previous loss such as claims management firm, a special division of the police or the Government or claim to be working with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or another regulating body, to recover lost funds. Emails or letters sent to you from the wrongdoers often closely resemble the appearance of the genuine organisations.” Joanna further pointed out “the perpetrators frequently use high-pressure tactics to rush the victim into action, implying that they can only recover the money if they act immediately”.

The victim will be asked for money in advance, this may happen more than once on the pretext that the matter is more complex. Frequently there will be a request for your bank account details or the wallet, in the case of cryptocurrency fraud. A variety of spurious reasons will be given by the fraudster for the need for this information, such as the money must be delivered straight into a secure bank account. Unfortunately, the actual reason is so that they can have access to your bank account and empty it. 

Giambrone & Partners’ financial fraud litigation lawyers are aware that a vast amount of individuals from all walks of life are particularly targeted by fraudsters every year and recent research suggests that older women are susceptible to recovery fraud and more trusting when under the impression that they are dealing with a person in authority. Investment fraud and financial scams have become the scourge of the modern age and the exponential growth and the adaptability of the wrongdoers leaves the regulatory authorities and law enforcement agencies grappling, on a daily basis, with this issue.

Our lawyers are adept at developing techniques to address the attempts to defraud victims for a second time and strongly recommend that extreme caution is applied to any approaches related to a previous scam. We are the leading lawyers in restoring our clients’ funds lost to financial fraud.

Joanna Bailey heads our banking and financial fraud litigation department.

Joanna frequently leads the litigation against financial institutions involved in cryptocurrency trading disputes, as well as Forex investment issues and regulatory investigations and has some considerable success in retrieving our clients' funds lost in fraud.

She has developed a range of strategies both to find the assets of the individuals perpetrating the fraudulent schemes and restore the funds to our clients. As well as recognising culpability in the organisations facilitating (but not associated with the fraud), by failing to undertake adequate due diligence.

Joanna led the first case in Europe where proceedings were served on Persons Unknown connected with two digital wallets over the blockchain by non-fungible token or ‘NFT’ in a cryptocurrency fraud. Following this ground-breaking case Joanna was named as Lawyer of the Week in the Financial Times.

Joanna is highly experienced in high-value out-of-court settlement negotiations and has in-depth knowledge of the Civil Procedure Rules as well as English common law.

If you believe that you may have been a victim of recovery fraud there are steps that our lawyers can take but in this instance, speed of legal action is imperative.

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