Loan Scammers Strike Again – Personal Loans Now reports about a New Twist on an Old Scam

Personal Loans Now warns the public about a new tactic that loan fee scammers are using.

Personalloansnow.co.uk is an established and trusted firm offering access to a wide range of personal loans. In a brazen move, fraudsters cloned the website, calling their version Personal Loan Now instead of Personal Loans Now.

Unlike the reports that have been in the news lately, these scammers are not just contacting people and impersonating well-known, authorised lenders. In this case, they’ve gone a step further and created an identical copy of the website. The clone site is called personalloannow.co.uk and scammers use the company's reputation to trick victims into applying for unsecured loans with them, handing over their sensitive personal and financial details.

"We started to get people calling us about a loan that they’d been approved for and paid for. We immediately launched our thorough incident-handling protocol and discovered both the fake website and the numbers they were calling from. All details were reported to the FCA. We have contained the effect of the scam by neutralizing the fake website,” says Ofer Valencio Akerman, Cyber Security Expert at Personal Loans Now.

“It is important to mention that our customers’ data has not been compromised. The scammers are working with data they got from email marketing companies and unlicensed brokers who want to leverage on their database. In this case, Personal loans now trusted reputation was used.”

Personal Loans Now wants to prevent people from becoming victims of this scam and others by raising awareness of the warning signals.

• You haven’t applied yet they claim to have approved your loan
• The caller has a thick foreign accent
• The scammer can become rude, aggressive or even threatening
• You are put under pressure to decide and pay them urgently
• They request a fee or charge to be paid prior to receiving the loan
• The method of payment is unusual: via Western Union, MoneyGram, buying mail orders or Apple iTunes gift cards etc.

Mr Akerman offers further advice on protecting yourself from fraud.

“As a security expert, I have seen thousands of different frauds and scams. To protect your personal information and avoid losing money I strongly recommend that you ALWAYS do the following whenever you get an email or a call:

• ALWAYS: Take their bank details if you are asked to pay a fee for initiating the loan. This will allow us to identify the fraudster’s bank account and get them eradicated.
• ALWAYS: Ask for an actual address in the UK and their FCA authorisation number, so you can compare it with the information on the website they claim to work with.
• ALWAYS: Ask for a call back number. This will help us to get them!
• NEVER: Give your personal details, bank account details or anything that they could use against you.
• REMEMBER: FCA authorised lenders will never call you to offer you a loan, and will never ask you to pay anything before you receive the loan. This is illegal in the UK.

The scammer may try to pressure you, but never pass up on these essential steps.”

Think! Is it a loan, or is it a clone? Check the FCA's news page to see if it's listed!

About Personal Loans Now

Personal Loans Now is a trading company of Rigstone Capital UG – an Introducer Appointed Representative of Monevo which is part of the Quint Group. Quint Group Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. All Quint’s affiliated lenders are fully authorised by the FCA. UK citizens can apply for loans of £500 - £25,000 with loan terms of 2 months to 10 years+ on the personalloansnow.co.uk website. We care about your safety and online experience!