The Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) has is­sued a third pub­lic warn­ing on the grow­ing threat of in­vest­ment scams. The alert fol­lows two pre­vi­ous no­tices in No­vem­ber 2024 and Feb­ru­ary 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to TTSEC, mem­bers of the pub­lic con­tin­ue to fall vic­tim to in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed schemes. The Com­mis­sion has urged in­di­vid­u­als to ex­er­cise cau­tion and re­main in­formed about the tac­tics fraud­sters use to gain trust and ac­cess to funds.

TTSEC out­lined sev­er­al red flags that may in­di­cate fraud­u­lent in­vest­ment op­er­a­tions.

One tac­tic in­volves the use of fake so­cial me­dia pro­files. These ac­counts of­ten con­tain stolen or gener­ic im­ages, lim­it­ed bi­o­graph­i­cal de­tails, and un­clear con­tent. Fraud­sters use these pro­files to ini­ti­ate con­tact and build trust.

An­oth­er sign in­volves un­re­al­is­tic promis­es of re­turns. TTSEC point­ed to ex­am­ples such as “Earn $30,150 on a $2,000 in­vest­ment in 2 hours” as a com­mon lure used by scam­mers.

TTSEC al­so warned against switch­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions to pri­vate mes­sag­ing plat­forms such as What­sApp and Telegram. Fraud­sters pos­ing as in­vest­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives of­ten make false claims and as­sur­ances once con­tact is made on these plat­forms.

The Com­mis­sion re­port­ed that scam­mers fre­quent­ly send bank­ing in­for­ma­tion with ur­gent de­posit in­struc­tions. Vic­tims are pres­sured to trans­fer funds quick­ly to se­cure in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties or guar­an­tee high­er re­turns.

A fur­ther con­cern raised by TTSEC in­volves claims of no fees or fast with­drawals. Vic­tims are shown fake in­vest­ment plat­forms with in­flat­ed bal­ances. These plat­forms are de­signed to de­ceive users in­to be­liev­ing they are earn­ing sub­stan­tial prof­its.

The Com­mis­sion al­so not­ed a rise in the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. Scam­mers now use AI to cre­ate false doc­u­ments and im­per­son­ate pub­lic of­fi­cials. These im­per­son­ations can in­clude in­sti­tu­tion­al lo­gos, emails, and even video mes­sages. TTSEC urged in­di­vid­u­als to ver­i­fy all in­for­ma­tion di­rect­ly with the named in­sti­tu­tion.

Fi­nal­ly, TTSEC warned of ex­ces­sive with­draw­al fees. Vic­tims are of­ten re­quired to pay over TT$1,000 to ac­cess prof­its. Af­ter the ini­tial pay­ment, ad­di­tion­al charges may be re­quest­ed, with no ac­tu­al pay­out de­liv­ered.

TTSEC con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor these de­vel­op­ments and en­cour­ages the pub­lic to re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty. The Com­mis­sion reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing in­vestors and main­tain­ing pub­lic aware­ness.