13 february 2024, 11:12

Cases of unidentified persons interacting with citizens on behalf of the FOS revealed

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has identified cases of interaction with citizens by unidentified persons on behalf of Assistant Financial Ombudsman who get in touch on the phone and offer assistance in recovering funds from financial pyramid schemes.

Since the end of 2023, the Service’s contact center has been receiving calls and chat messages in which citizens claim that the caller is impersonating an assistant to a “state ombudsman”. The callers further inform citizens that the Ombudsman for financial services consumers support Service (OFSC) has received information from the Bank of Russia that the customer has been defrauded by “fraudsters” and that they are in a position to help recover lost funds at no cost. For instance, in some cases citizens were offered assistance in recovering funds from a financial pyramid scheme.

Based on the information obtained from callers to the FOS who received such calls, they had not appealed to a financial ombudsman, but had once, in their words, been defrauded by a financial pyramid scheme or other unscrupulous organisations.

The Financial Ombudsman Service makes appropriate requests to law enforcement bodies on these facts.

The Financial Ombudsman Service kindly reminds that it only interacts with consumers of financial services if the consumer has submitted an appeal to the Financial Ombudsman. As a general rule, the interaction is carried out through the channel chosen by the consumer for filing an appeal: through the consumer’s personal account on the FOS official website, or by mail. In addition, the Service employees can make a call from 8 (495) 129–08–19 phone number with regard to the list of documents in a previously submitted appeal to the Financial Ombudsman, as well as in response to consumers’ questions when addressing the Financial Ombudsman contact center by 8–800–200–00–10 number.

When the consumer’s appeal is being considered, the citizen can also be contacted (by phone included) by the expert organisation engaged by the FOS to conduct an expert examination. The list of expert organisations engaged by the FOS is also available on the FOS official website under “Expert Organisations” tab. The consumer of financial services is sent a notification about the appointed expert examination to the consumer’s personal account.

Therefore, if you have not applied to the Financial Ombudsman, but unidentified persons call you and introduce themselves as the Financial Ombudsman Service employees, assistants to a financial ombudsman, you are strongly advised not to have any conversation with them, and certainly not to provide any personal data or meet with them.

Besides, the Financial Ombudsman’s competences do not include matters of appeal consideration related to the activities of financial pyramid schemes.

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