Thousands of scammers impersonate finance watchdog

The UK’s financial regulator has warned of an increasing number of scammers pretending to be the watchdog.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said its impersonators aim to get people to hand over money or sensitive information, such as bank account PINs and passwords.

The public reported more than 7,700 instances of this type of scam to the FCA’s contact centre so far this year.

Reports of this type of scam have more than doubled since 2021, the FCA said.

It added that a common tactic used by fraudsters was to tell people they were owed compensation, and then ask for bank details or a processing fee to arrange “payment”…