They call you up to warn you of fraud... then proceed to scam you, arbiter warns

Scammers have taken their game to “a higher level” last year, Malta’s financial arbiter has warned, describing how fraudsters are now using Maltese speakers with local banking knowledge to dupe unsuspecting victims.

Writing in his office’s 2025 annual report, published on Wednesday, financial arbiter Alfred Mifsud pointed to several types of scams that appear to be on the rise.

Scams carried out through the fraudulent use of apps became far more sophisticated throughout 2025, Mifsud noted.

Previously, scammers would typically limit themselves to impersonating banks by mimicking their typical channels of communication, such as cloning their customer care telephone numbers.

Now, Mifsud said, this was being given further credibility through “a phone call from the usual bank number by a Maltese-speaking person who is evidently familiar with bank procedures and has access to confidential data”.

The financial arbiter described the resulting cases as “the sinner posing as a virgin”, with scammers often posing as bank officials and informing their clients of fraudulent payments. Once they have convinced the victims of their authenticity, they carry out the “exact fraud payment they had warned about”.

Meanwhile, the rise in relationship fraud “takes the scam industry to an industrial scale,” Mifsud said.

In these types of scams, known as pig butchering schemes to describe how victims are fattened up akin to pigs for the slaughter, scammers gain the trust of their victims over a period of time by posing as potential romantic partners, employers or investment advisers, before persuading them to make the fraudulent payments.

By making victims name themselves as the beneficiaries of the payments, scammers often successfully bypass banks’ payment monitoring systems, Mifsud said.

By the time the fraud is uncovered, “losses would amount to significant amounts, often six-digit figures”.

A semi-retired captain, a 72-year-old pensioner and a driving instructor

The report points to several victims of similar scams in recent years.

In one case, a semi-retired airline training captain filed a report against Malta-licensed crypto firm Crypto.com after he lost more than £609,000 (€713,000) to a scam.

Scammers had used a fake trading platform to persuade him to transfer the funds,

taking advantage of his precarious emotional state after the death of his father-in-law and the resulting sale of his estate.

Despite finding fiduciary shortcomings on Crypto.com’s part, the arbiter said the firm could not be held responsible for the fraudulent payments.

In another case, a 72-year-old pensioner lost £23,300 (€27,300) to a crypto scam after she was “coached and encouraged” by scammers to place her savings into an account run by OpenPayd, a payment institution offering virtual IBAN services in Malta.

After gaining the woman’s trust, the scammers had obtained remote access to her phone using the AnyDesk app, a remote desktop application, before opening the fraudulent account.

“She was persuaded this was safe as the accounts were in her own name,” the arbiter said in its report on the case.

The arbiter initially found that OpenPayd had failed to adequately intervene once the unusual payments were issued, ordering the platform to refund the full sum to the victim. However, this decision was later overturned by the court of appeal.

In a third case, a driving instructor issued 30 payments, totalling €70,000, from BOV to a fake crypto investment.

The payments took place over a seven-month period, with scammers initially posing as a woman who contacted him through Facebook. As the communication continued, later through WhatsApp and Telegram, he was gradually persuaded to start investing in what he believed to be a genuine crypto platform.

The victim only caught wind of the scam after travelling to Canada in the hope of meeting the woman he believed he was speaking to, only to find that he had been blocked on all social media platforms.

Following the arbiter’s investigation, BOV was ordered to refund part of the fraudulent payments, totalling to just under €27,000, for its failure to intervene.