Svindlere lurer folk til å gjemme gull i skogen

The Norwegian financial watchdog, Finans Norge, has issued a warning about an unusual type of scam. Scammers trick people into buying gold at high prices, promising to securely store it and let its value increase over time. In numerous instances, victims were led on a sort of treasure hunt to hide the gold in the forest. Several banks reported customers who have been affected.

"Be extremely cautious if someone contacts you and asks you to invest in gold or other assets," advises Gry Nergård, a fraud prevention expert at Finans Norge. Fraudsters often target employees with access to the company's bank account. They typically begin with a text message or email, then call pretending to be the bank to obtain the employee's BankID password.

Fake gifts from cosmetics company Lyko. Victims receive a message saying they have won a gift. To claim it, they must click a link and input personal details, which fall into the hands of the scammers. Victims believe they are meeting a reputable firm in the forest that can safely store the gold. "Often the recipient says they cannot come and asks that the gold be placed somewhere nearby," Nergård explains.

"This could be a parking lot in a city, a forest, or a plot of land." Banks cannot track gold, and scammers escape all control when victims purchase it physically and deliver it themselves, Nergård says. Most of these cases are in Lillestrøm, Drammen, Oslo, and Bergen. "We believe it may have happened elsewhere without victims contacting the bank," she notes.

Gold has also become much more valuable. Over the past three years, the price of gold has risen by around 110 percent, from $1970 per ounce to $4085. The peak was near $5512 at the end of January this year. "Scammers are good at manipulating," Nergård says. It's a sort of relationship and investment scam where people are manipulated into doing extraordinary things.

She explains that victims have invested in more than just gold. Anything untraceable is attractive to scammers. "First they ask victims to invest in crypto," Nergård explains. "If victims say no, they propose gold as a safer alternative." "What we see is that the sums vary," Nergård says. Scammers are skilled at finding out how much money the victim has and feel ahead of the conversation before proposing anything.

Banks say the method is a new trend under investment fraud, which Finans Norge has already been working against. "We want to warn against it and make people aware that it exists," she says. Last year, banks and customers lost 962 million kroner to the scam. At the same time, banks stopped fraud attempts on over 3.5 billion kroner.

She encourages victims to report the scammers. "People should report all fraud cases, both digitally and to the police. It's important for understanding the scope and fighting the methods," Nergård says.