TTSEC warns of rising investment scams and fake AI endorsements

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) is warn­ing the pub­lic about in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­vest­ment scams, in­clud­ing the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to cre­ate fake en­dorse­ments and in­ter­views fea­tur­ing promi­nent pub­lic fig­ures and me­dia per­son­al­i­ties.

In its sixth in­vestor alert is­sued on Thurs­day, the TTSEC said fraud­sters con­tin­ue to adapt their tac­tics through fake so­cial me­dia pro­files, im­per­son­ation of le­git­i­mate fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and pro­fes­sion­als, de­cep­tive in­vest­ment ad­ver­tise­ments, and mis­lead­ing on­line com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

One of the lat­est scams in­volves Guardian Me­dia ed­i­tor Ke­jan Haynes, with a fake on­line pub­li­ca­tion de­pict­ing an in­ter­view with for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Guardian Me­dia has dis­avows any as­so­ci­a­tion with the pub­li­ca­tion and warned that it is fraud­u­lent be­cause no such in­ter­view has hap­pened.

The com­mis­sion said scam­mers are now us­ing AI to cre­ate con­vinc­ing fake pro­files, videos and im­ages of high-rank­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials and in­sti­tu­tions to lend cred­i­bil­i­ty to their schemes.

"Al­ways ver­i­fy di­rect­ly with the named in­di­vid­ual," the TTSEC ad­vised.

The reg­u­la­tor high­light­ed sev­er­al warn­ing signs that mem­bers of the pub­lic should be aware of, in­clud­ing un­re­al­is­tic promis­es of re­turns, pres­sure to de­posit mon­ey quick­ly, re­quests to trans­fer funds in­to per­son­al bank ac­counts, and de­mands for ad­di­tion­al fees be­fore prof­its can be with­drawn.

It al­so warned against pro­vid­ing sen­si­tive per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments, bank­ing de­tails, pass­words and PIN num­bers, to un­known in­di­vid­u­als.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTSEC, some vic­tims are giv­en ac­cess to fake in­vest­ment plat­forms that dis­play ex­ag­ger­at­ed ac­count bal­ances to cre­ate the il­lu­sion of sub­stan­tial prof­its.

The com­mis­sion said scam­mers of­ten use fab­ri­cat­ed tes­ti­mo­ni­als and per­sis­tent mes­sag­ing cam­paigns to pres­sure peo­ple in­to in­vest­ing, be­fore even­tu­al­ly cut­ting off com­mu­ni­ca­tion when vic­tims seek re­funds or raise con­cerns.

The TTSEC urged the pub­lic to be scep­ti­cal of un­so­licit­ed in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly those pro­mot­ed on so­cial me­dia and mes­sag­ing ap­pli­ca­tions such as What­sApp and Telegram.

Be­fore in­vest­ing, in­di­vid­u­als are en­cour­aged to ver­i­fy whether an en­ti­ty or its pro­mot­ers are reg­is­tered with the TTSEC, con­duct in­de­pen­dent due dili­gence, and re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty to mar­ket­com­[email protected].

The com­mis­sion warned that in­vest­ing with un­reg­is­tered en­ti­ties could re­sult in the com­plete loss of funds.

The TTSEC said it re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing fair­ness, eq­ui­ty and trans­paren­cy in the se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket and urged the pub­lic to stay in­formed and vig­i­lant against evolv­ing scams.