Scam alert: Bank of Ireland Green Energy Bond paying up to 7.75% p.a.

podgerodge said:
@Brendan Burgess

So I checked the email, it's header is:

From: Bank of Ireland Green Energy Bond

Subject: 7.75% Tax free Green Energy Bond

Date: 4 October 2023 at 13:20:20 IST
Click to expand...
Code: 
boi.eu.com
seems to be a fake domain - doesn't appear on any domain registry lookup that I checked anyway.
Maybe you can look at the raw/detailed email headers as they may shed more light on the origin of the email?
Most email clients have a way of doing this.
But it's probably pointless to be honest.
 
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@podgerodge
As well as the email, ask your friend if they'd recently followed any 'best savings rates' type link that might have popped up in a social media feed, or a Google search result. There are hundreds of them, many of which appear genuine on first glance.
 
Yep. It led to pure junk site, not even related to the scam. Will check the headers later.
 
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podgerodge said:
Yep. It led to pure junk site, not even related to the scam. Will check the headers later.
Click to expand...
The link that you used may have been something else as
Code: 
http://www.boi.eu.com/
gives this:

2023-10-05 11 19 03.png
 
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Can I just check folks that putting up these email addresses and links is not in any way dangerous for askaboutmoney or promoting them in any way?

For example, Google penalises websites for links to bad sites.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Can I just check folks that putting up these email addresses and links is not in any way dangerous for askaboutmoney or promoting them in any way?

For example, Google penalises websites for links to bad sites.

Brendan
Click to expand...
I would definitely delete the hyperlinks to known scam sites.
 
Unfortunately scammers rely on people just scanning through a document, so as not to spot the red-flags.

Typical signs to watch out for...
1. If its too good to be true, it probably is untrue
2. Typos. Legit offerings rarely have typos.
3. Poor grammar, generally gibberish which appears at first sight to be genuine.
4. Unusual looking URLs such as boi.eu.com. Ideally, if you hover over a link you can see the real destination. Don't click unless you are absolutely sure its legit. A common trick is to copy a real URL but mis-spell it by a single character. It will actually lead to a scam site.
5. Outlandish claims. ie Guaranteed profit x%, no-risk
6. Follow-on requests for information. This is where the scammers hope you will go to capture your details. Check any links or phone numbers with the organisation in question before following up.
 
I reported it to BoI and got this prompt response

Hi Brendan, thanks for taking the time to send that on to us.

Yes we are aware of it. As we've seen with other investment scams, the starting point seems to when someone does an online search for something like "best rates" or "best deposit rates" and gets a promoted / sponsored ad for what looks like it is a comparison website.

Those sites themselves are normally quite generic and don’t use any brands or names of genuine financial institutions. The sites are basically just single pages with very high-level information, along with an input box to collect contact details - that's the key part from the fraudster's perspective and if someone does give an email address or a phone number, they are then contacted with the kind of information highlighted on your site.

On this current one, we've heard from a customer who gave an email address and were contacted by people claiming to be "from" BOI, AIB, and RBS.

As well as following up in the background on different aspects of this from a prevention / reporting perspective, we're also looking at the messages and information we give to our customers to see where we need to update or add to that.
 
The people who fall for it typically would not be good at spelling. Most would see through it, but it is a well polished scam. Reasonably good graphics. Does anything really happen to these people though? You never see convictions
 
time to plan said:
Up to you Brendan, but from the perspective of the casual browser looking at the screen below, it's easy to get a false impression.

View attachment 8002
Click to expand...
I had already edited my original post in BLOCK Caps to state it's a scam.

In terms of the thread title, there is a good argument that plenty will open , and therefore plenty will be warned.
 
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