Recovering your money from financial scams

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JIMMY MOYAHA: We usually have what we call ‘Warning Wednesdays’ on the show, when we look at some important things that you need to be aware of – as they relate to financial services, businesses and protecting yourselves as consumers.

Now yes, today certainly is not Wednesday. I’m not ahead of myself in the calendar but I thought, given that it is 2026, and that we are living in a world of uncertainty, why not change things up a bit and do it on a Tuesday? So we’re going to do Warning Wednesdays on a Tuesday just because we can.

I’m joined on the line by the divisional executive for enforcement at the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, the FSCA, Gerhard van Deventer, to take a look at some of the warnings the FSCA has been putting out and how South Africans can keep themselves safe.

Gerhard, lovely having you on the show as always. Thanks so much for taking the time. Now the warning space and what’s been happening in the financial services space – you and I cover this as often as we can and try to keep consumers as safe as we can, but it seems as though the schemes just keep coming up.

GERHARD VAN DEVENTER: Absolutely true, Jimmy. It’s like you are climbing uphill and sometimes you feel a little bit despondent, but I don’t think we’re going to go there.

Before I answer your questions, I am so relieved because, since you asked to speak to me today, I was under the impression it is Wednesday. I’m so happy there’s another day left before the weekend.

Let me start and pick up on your question.

Yes, it seems like we see an influx of these scams all the time, and they’re getting more sophisticated.

They’re well timed. They’re well linked to things that are actually current in the news and so forth. And it’s the same story. It’s the unrealistic returns we need to look out for.

I’m hoping the fact that we’ve now taken Banxso’s licence, we’ve taken AfriMarkets’s licence, and we’ve done things like that which will send a message out there.

There is something else I also want to mention, Jimmy, and that is that we are in the final stages of joining an international platform where warnings are easily accessible to everybody. It’s called I-Scan or iScanner, and it is an initiative of Iosco, the International Organisation of Securities Commissions, and we’ve been invited to join.

It will mean that all our warnings can go on there, and people like yourself and the public and financial advisors, et cetera, can access it and see the warnings from everybody across the world. Maybe that’ll help a little.

I still don’t know how we get through to our poor citizens who are being defrauded on a daily basis.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Well, let’s take a look at some of the particular warnings that came up now. You touched on the fact that they are becoming more sophisticated and more timely, and I noted that one of the warnings that went out was around Gold Earnings Hub and Africa Gold Capital, two businesses that purport to provide returns in the gold space.

Now we know the gold price has been moving quite a bit, to your point around the fact that the scams themselves are now being lined up with what’s happening in real market events.

GERHARD VAN DEVENTER: That is absolutely so. That’s a good point that you picked up there.

We’d be making a big mistake if we imagine that there’s some not-too-bright guy sitting in a dark room somewhere with a computer and internet access, and coming up with these scams.

It is not like that.

The bad news behind that is that our public don’t have a chance if they don’t focus and don’t have a really good look at what they are reading.

At the FSCA conference, somebody told the story on one of the panels that struck me.

This was a sophisticated investor in the industry who was about to be scammed …

The only way that he could see that the documents were forged, the only thing that tipped him off – you can imagine what trend we are talking about here – was that the Absa logo in this case was slightly off-centre, or off where it was supposed to be.

This person then said, hang on, let me just check – and it turned out to be a scam.

If that’s the level of accuracy that a scammer goes through, then you can understand how bad it is.

But you are right. It’s not an unsophisticated guy sitting in a dark corner. This is well planned.

There are people well aware of what’s happening in the world and of current affairs. It has become, I think, a very viable career to be part of a scam like this.

Take into account it’s also not one person. These are big organisations.

If you look at how Banxso unfolded with a scammer behind the whole story, then feeding context through to Banxso itself, then you realise these are big organisations and they really are doing very well – and we have to do better if we want to combat that.

JIMMY MOYAHA: You mentioned the Banxso conversation. I want to look at a new element that has come up as a result of that conversation. For many of the consumers out there, once an enforcement action has taken place, the assumption is then that nothing is done from that perspective.

But we’re now also seeing that the scammers are going a step further and impersonating officials that hope to help you recover your lost money.

So now we’re going beyond the initial scam of scamming the individual to take the money, but it’s to say ‘If you’ve been a victim of this particular company, we are here to assist you’. Even that itself is a scam.

Can we just remind the listeners and the South African community of the official channels that should then be followed if monies are recovered, if monies are frozen, and how that works from a regulatory standpoint.

GERHARD VAN DEVENTER: Thank you very much for that opportunity to say something about this. Yes, there is something that happens from time to time. It usually means we are impersonated, or somebody else is impersonated.

The truth, to give you a short answer, is there is no way that the FSCA or the Prudential Authority or the Reserve Bank or the FIC, the Financial Intelligence Centre, is going to contact you and say, ‘Pay me an amount of money and I’ll help you to recover’. That will never happen.

The only way to recover money if you have a dispute is through the ombud system and, of course, if you take legal action yourself.

So if there is money available, if there are assets available in these cases – and I have to remind the public of the sad truth that there seldom is – we would approach the FIC, which will do a freeze … on the bank account.

And the FIC from there will take you to the AFU [Asset Forfeiture Unit] and we will assist so that the AFU before court can get an order to preserve the funds, a preservation order.

From there are a couple of ways it can go.

It can go into curatorship, and an appointed official curator will then do that type of distribution of the assets. It’s a long story and you will get official communication of that.

Or of course the company can be placed into liquidation by the court. That’ll be all over the news and an official liquidator will contact you.

There is no such thing as somebody contacting you and saying: ‘Listen, we can get your money back. We’re going to give you some back, but you have to make a payment.’

You have to always treat that with the greatest of suspicion.

And my advice to the public is, if they get that type of approach and it relates to one of our cases, contact us and speak to us.

But I can say now the answer will be no, it is a scam.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Folks, we can only do so much from our perspective. We have these conversations as often as we can so that you know what is going on out there and how to stay safe.

But more important than anything, do your homework, do your research, and do not hand over your hard-earned money to organisations that you have not properly researched. We’ll leave the conversation on that note.

Thanks as always to the divisional head of enforcement at the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, Gerard van Deventer, for joining us to take a look at the latest round of warnings and how to recover your finances properly if you have been the victim of a scam.

Read: Banxso and AfriMarkets reborn under different names?