The Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of T&T (FI­UTT) yes­ter­day is­sued an ur­gent pub­lic ad­vi­so­ry fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a fraud­u­lent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion scheme ac­tive­ly tar­get­ing cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease, reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties have de­tect­ed in­di­vid­u­als car­ry­ing coun­ter­feit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, who false­ly claim af­fil­i­a­tion with key state fi­nan­cial and law en­force­ment in­sti­tu­tions.

The fraud­u­lent cre­den­tials promi­nent­ly dis­play the of­fi­cial lo­gos of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT), the FI­UTT it­self, and the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, in a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to de­ceive vic­tims.

In­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers re­vealed that these scam­mers are cur­rent­ly mas­querad­ing as of­fi­cial state rep­re­sen­ta­tives, fre­quent­ly us­ing the fab­ri­cat­ed job ti­tle of “fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst su­per­vi­sor” to gain im­me­di­ate cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Armed with these de­cep­tive cre­den­tials, the in­di­vid­u­als are be­lieved to be at­tempt­ing unau­tho­rised fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions, con­duct­ing il­lic­it in­quiries and po­ten­tial­ly ex­ploit­ing un­sus­pect­ing mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The FI­UTT stat­ed that the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards cur­rent­ly in cir­cu­la­tion are com­plete­ly fake, unau­tho­rised and legal­ly in­valid.

The state agency em­pha­sised that nei­ther the FI­UTT, the Cen­tral Bank, nor the Po­lice Ser­vice’s Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch is­sues iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards of this na­ture to their per­son­nel. Fur­ther­more, the pub­lic has been strong­ly re­mind­ed that these in­di­vid­u­als pos­sess ab­solute­ly no le­gal au­thor­i­ty to trans­act busi­ness, ex­e­cute fi­nan­cial au­dits, or rep­re­sent any state fi­nan­cial body.

Cru­cial­ly, the ad­vi­so­ry high­light­ed that the FI­UTT does not re­quire, charge, or re­quest any fees, ad­min­is­tra­tive penal­ties, or pay­ments of mon­ey from in­di­vid­u­als or busi­ness­es dur­ing its dai­ly reg­u­la­to­ry op­er­a­tions.

Cit­i­zens are urged to re­main high­ly vig­i­lant and to im­me­di­ate­ly de­sist from en­gag­ing with any­one pre­sent­ing these spe­cif­ic “fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst su­per­vi­sor” cre­den­tials.

The state se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus has ex­plic­it­ly warned the pub­lic not to pro­vide mon­ey, per­son­al doc­u­ments or sen­si­tive cor­po­rate fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion to these fraud­sters. In­stead, any in­ter­ac­tions or sight­ings of the coun­ter­feit cards must be re­port­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice or the Cen­tral Bank.

To en­sure ab­solute safe­ty, cit­i­zens could ver­i­fy the le­git­i­ma­cy of any fi­nan­cial ini­tia­tive by con­tact­ing of­fi­cial chan­nels at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex.