In one devastating moment, Jane Caldwell realised she had lost £200,000. The money had come in part from a life insurance payout that she had not touched since her partner’s death a decade before. She had set it aside for their disabled daughter’s future.
“As an older mother and with her father having passed away, I thought my daughter is probably going to need my help in the future which I won’t be around to do,” says Caldwell, who asked for her name to be changed so she would not be targeted by fraudsters.
In mid-2018, Caldwell, who is unable to work for health reasons, received a call from a man she understood to be from Nationwide, with which she had savings bonds. It was not from Nationwide at all – but the caller appeared to know all about her finances.
Caldwell was about to become one of a rapidly growing number of victims of investment scams who are finding little help from regulators, banks or the police when they lose life-changing sums of money.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) knew about the scam six months before the call but failed to stop salespeople pursuing the vulnerable for almost two years, an investigation by The Independent has found.
Reports of investment fraud to police more than tripled between 2017 and 2020 and are on course to hit a record high this year. Victims reported almost 7,000 cases and £177m of losses in the first three months of the year alone, new figures from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau show.
Since 2017,…
