Diamond Fraud

Diamond fraud via telemarketing

This year is not a good year to invest in diamond business, unless you want to get scammed.
Fraudster masterminds have found a new way of getting their hands on your money, and this new fraud includes diamonds. More correctly, it involves you investing in diamond business. So if you get a call during which a telemarketer offers you high returns by investing in rare jewels, you should be very careful about what you are going to say or decide. This fraud has been mostly active in the region of Great Britain where the police is currently conducting a number of live investigations into diamond fraud. The fact that diamond investments are an unregulated form of investment and diamond brokers do not have to be registered with the regulator doesn’t help much to these investigations. Just last year, there have been about 250 reports of diamond fraud.

A victim loses over £90,000

The telemarketing fraudsters or cold callers mean business, and they are always praying on the weak and the vulnerable. The best example of this is a victim that lost over £90,000 in three months. The victim was called by a firm pitching diamond investments and handed over the money in three portions, and each time a transaction was planned, he was told to keep it a secret. The reasons to keep it a secret were the same old story about less people knowing about it, the more money you will make. “I get the impression my dad wanted to give these people all this money just to get them off his back,” said the man's son, Ben. “I think he was quite scared of them, and he feared for his own safety a little bit.” His father's financial adviser contacted Ben to establish why a large sum had been requested; his father was about to invest another £85,000 before his son intervened. Because he has power of attorney over his father's affairs, Ben asked the diamond brokers to stop ringing and to hand over the jewels so they could be sold. But every time he contacted them there was some sort of obstacle in the way to stop them sending the stones. The diamond fraud is just one in the sea of fraud examples done this way. These frauds are also known as boiler room scams, where individuals are targeted with cold calling on the telephone and pressured into making purchases of items, whether that is diamonds, shares or equities. They’re called boiler rooms because it is about exerting extreme pressure on people to part with their cash.

A former broker spills the beans

People who unfortunately become victim to this type of fraud are often sold items for prices that are grossly inflated against what they’re actually worth – as in a number of cases of diamond fraud. Sometimes the items don’t even exist. The fraudsters take people’s money on the promise of high investment returns, but the only people who gain are the criminals. We can only imagine how awful it must feel for people to discover that the savings they’ve accumulated in their working lives have vanished overnight as a result of this despicable criminal activity. Recently a former diamond broker came out and spilled the beans about the tactics used by these companies. First thing he revealed is that these fraudsters use tape with recorded sounds that is being played in the background to make the office seem busier than it really was since there weren't that many employees. He also said that he had to follow a script and was trained in high-pressure tactics to get investors to part with their cash. The former broker became suspicious when they told him that he should change his surname. The managers did it too, and he was told that it was to protect him. “Looking back, I think if everything's 100% legitimate, there would be no reason to hide.” he adds.
We hope that all these information help you in smart dealing with the cold callers the next time they offer you to invest in something. The smartest way is to hang up the phone and not even give them a hope of you becoming their next victim.