False contracts, offered by direct sellers by phone or email, promising a daring return. This Tuesday, the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) warns of scams linked to investments in parking spaces, which are becoming more and more widespread.
The AMF says it has received "numerous reports" from people who have been defrauded and who have paid large sums of money to invest in parking spaces, in particular "European airports", in exchange for the false promise of a high efficiency. "There is actually no acquisition or rental of parking lots behind these fraudulent offers," said the stock market policeman in a press release.
50,000 euros lost
Each time, the method used is the same: the victims are canvassed by "phone or email", before being redirected to an online platform and signing a false rental contract.
These sites "usurp the names of financial actors or groups listed on the stock market in the construction sector to make their offers more credible," says the AMF. The authority cites the example of a retiree who lost “his savings” after having succumbed to an offer supposedly from a “director of a real estate company headquartered in Germany” and sent 50,000 euros with the hope for a 4.5% return over one year.
She again calls for vigilance on "the information given by companies, whether orally or in writing" and points out that it is not because a company has not been the subject of '' a warning from the AMF that it is authorized to provide financial services.
Wine, gold or cow herds
The ads on social networks are particularly "the preferred areas of scammers to phish their future victims," said the regulator. The French market policeman has been constantly warning about new scams in wine, gold and cow herds lately. Among the other particularly criminalized investments are those in diamonds, cannabis, rare earths, cryptoactive, grands crus or international currencies (“forex”).
And with the coronavirus crisis, the AMF recently sounded the alarm in front of sites offering to invest in chloroquine, whiskey, those promise a credit in months of 3 days without any conditions or false kitty online . Since the start of the year, more than 200 fraudulent sites or entities have added to the black lists published on the Assurance Banque Épargne Info Service (ABEIS) site.