How to spot a financial scam

You may be confident that you are too canny ever to be taken in by financial scam artists. Perhaps you should think again. We reveal four of the most popular cons and how to avoid them.

Con merchants have been around since the dawn of time but the electronic age has delivered them more opportunities than ever to find and rip off victims. Government statistics suggest that fraudsters target around 28 million consumers a year in the UK alone, with a total of £1bn lost. One type of scam, aimed at investors in particular, costs each victim an average of £20,000, and in some cases over £100,000, according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

And if you think you could never be fooled, the FSA points out that the typical victim of these "boiler rooms" is not usually some gullible old lady, but in fact a middle-aged man with more than a little financial experience behind him often precisely the sort of person who reads investment magazines such as MoneyWeek. Worse still, the FSA says it fields around 100 calls a month.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.