Last year, the authority issued 3,471 warnings to various companies and sites.

This is an increase of 25 percent compared to the previous year.

- An enormous increase that reflects an increased number of cases and more questions from consumers, comments Mikael Sandahl, financial inspector at the authority.

Despite a bad year for cryptocurrencies, the inspectorate has seen that more and more fraudsters want to see payments in, for example, bitcoin, which makes it more difficult to trace those responsible.

- The fraudsters want to hide their whereabouts in every way and resort to this trick.

Exploiting celebrities

The people who market the offers also often state that they work on behalf of well-known companies or authorities - including the Financial Supervisory Authority.

Even celebrities' names and faces have been used in scam ads on Facebook.

Mikael Sandahl describes how the scams often start with the consumer voluntarily providing information online.

Major prosecution is delayed

SVT has several times drawn attention to suspected investment fraud.

Last fall, an investigation showed that there are connections between new investment sites and people who since 2021 have been charged with, among other things, gross fraud in Uppsala in a suspected investment scam around the company Systemhus, see fact box below.

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Three tips - how to avoid investing in rogue companies.

Photo: Oskar Fries/SVT