Pension savers targeted by fraudsters for millions of pounds

pension fraudFraudsters families are running pension scams worth tens of millions of pounds (Image: Getty Images)

Led by married couples, siblings or parents and children, they are often pension experts themselves or recruit rogue financial specialists to mount convincing frauds for them. Yesterday the Project Bloom group, which was set up to tackle pension scams, issued a warning that a number of "fraudster families" are targeting pension holders. Criminal investigations involving regulators, government agencies and police forces are currently ongoing into several of these gangs, which can be hard to track as they are often outwardly respectable.

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In addition people connected to the frauds, many of them highly qualified professionals, have been suspended or banned from being trustees and companies shut down.

In some cases the families have hired dishonest financial experts with specialist pension knowledge, including accountants, advisers and trustees, to run scams for them.

Stuart Feast, director of pension and investment specialist Zippen, said: "The danger with these 'fraudster families' is they're so sophisticated and well organised.

"Everything they do sounds and appears completely plausible, so it's not surprising that people fall for it.

fraudVictims of pension scams lost an average of £91,000 each in 2017 (Image: Getty Images)

"Networks of sales people, often cold calling, advisers, accountants all working in tandem. Add the word trustee into the mix and it becomes ironic as to how much credence it adds to everything

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